Anatomy of a Fall’s Most Suspenseful Scenes Are Actually 100% Authentic

Summary:

• Justine Triet’s drama Anatomy of a Fall became the center of everyone’s attention when it got to be a part of the latest awards season, and some specific details of the plot made many wonder whether they’re real or just a result of the director’s artistic decision.
• The film’s plot revolves around novelist Sandra who has to defend herself in the court against allegations in her husband’s murder.
• Anatomy of a Fall happens to have demonstrated some unusual, yet very real aspects of the legal system in France.

Anatomy of a Fall was one of the main hits of the latest awards season and even took home some major trophies like the Academy award for Best Original Screenplay, but some plot details may have still left a lot of viewers bewildered.

While the film’s ending is also shrouded in mystery of whether the main character was the murderer or not, it’s the court scenes that raised even more questions.

Justine Triet’s movie’s plot follows a couple of writers who live in an isolated French chalet in the mountains with their son. One day the main character Sandra, portrayed by Sandra Hüller, and her son Daniel discover a horrifying scene of Sandra husband and Daniel’s father Samuel lying dead on the snowy ground after having fallen from an attic window.

The trial that starts soon after makes Sandra the main suspect in her husband’s presumable murder and then unveils the couple’s problematic relationships that were kept from everyone’s eyes behind the happy family’s facade. From that moment Sandra has to find a way to prove her innocence.

The movie’s biggest and definitely the most important part is the court setting which gives the viewer a clue about what the French legal system is really like. And though the cinema is generally allowed to incorporate some reinvented elements of real life, the trial process in Anatomy of a Fall is actually very accurate — to many American viewers’ surprise.

Despite the fact that many American movies bring to the screens a really big court drama where emotions surely prevail over the court’s strict rules, it’s far from what the American system is like. In real life the court in the United Stated wouldn’t let two people speak simultaneously, preferring to listen to each one by one and without any interruptions.

The European, more specifically French, system is, as everyone could see in Anatomy of a Fall, absolutely different. Here not everything is about the organization and the order, but rather more about getting to the truth with a common discussion as one of the means. Just like it goes in the film, one witness can be easily interrupted by another one who has something to retort.

On top of that, the French legal system doesn’t let the suspect count entirely on their lawyer, but instead is waiting for the suspect to speak for themselves. In the movie this is also a scene that stands out as Sandra has to explain everything in the language which is not her native one.

Thus, the film’s court incorporations seem to have been made this way specifically to force the main character into feeling even more uncomfortable while trying to defend herself from accusations.

And even though we’ll never get to know whether she killed her husband or not, Sandra here appears to be a really firm fighter against the system’s tricky rules.

Source: Vulture