And of a Marriage

Anatomy of a Fall a film by Justine Triet.  With Sandra Huller, Milo Machado Graner, Samuel Theis.  Streaming on Amazon Prime.  *****

A friend whose opinion I respect recently said he hated this movie—and all courtroom dramas[1]—because many things take place that never happen in a courtroom.  I can’t argue with that, not having been in courtrooms much.[2]  But I loved this movie, because I thought it was a brilliant portrait of a marriage, admittedly one that came to a bad end; either the husband killed himself or his wife murdered him.  That question is at the heart of the drama.  By the time the movie ended, I was less sure of the answer than ever.

The marriage in question is between two writers, which sounds like a recipe for disaster (Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne pulled it off, but they never looked like the feel-good couple of the year).  One of the two is bound to be more successful, and writers are notorious for envying, even hating, their successful fellow writers (I speak from personal experience).  In this case, it is the wife who is successful, having published a number of books loosely based on her own life.

The husband—though he only speaks for himself in one scene, a fight with his wife that he recorded and that was played back at the trial—seems to be a talented person who has brilliant ideas but can’t bring them to fruition.  That is a recognizable type of human being, and writer.  He might think it is a good idea to marry a successful writer, that she will spur him on, but it’s his own head that keeps him from producing anything, while she has no such problem.  She seems modest in her success, but he was apparently smoldering in the background.

The movie opens when this woman, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller) is being interviewed by a younger woman interested in her work.  Her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) enacts the incredibly hostile gesture of playing deafening music upstairs, so loud the young woman is unable to continue.  It’s hard to believe a grown man could be so childish.  In any case—at least according to Sandra—she gives up on the interview, goes upstairs and finishes up a translation, then takes a nap, all with earplugs in (those must have been some earplugs).

Their son, who is visually impaired to the point of being legally blind, goes off to walk with his dog, and when he gets back discovers his father lying dead on the ground, having fallen—or jumped—from a third story window.  An autopsy reveals that he died of a blunt trauma injury to his head, which could have been caused by someone hitting him with something, or by his own collision with the roof of an outbuilding below. We see Sandra’s reaction to his death, which in no way seems phony, though she is mostly concerned with comforting her son.  But from the start, she is a suspect—the only suspect—and her trial is a sensation.

I felt at the start that she was innocent, but the longer the movie went on, the less sure I was.  She confesses to some affairs in the past; she is bisexual, and did seem in hindsight to be flirting with the woman who interviewed her.  We discover that their son’s vison problem was the result of an accident, and some negligence on the part of his father; the man blamed himself and felt extremely guilty.  Sandra admits to a period where she resented him for what happened (though she later gives a wonderful speech about how she does not see her son as handicapped; she sees him as living a full life, as indeed he does).  There is a subplot in one of her books where a wife is thinking of killing her husband; that seems feeble as an argument, though the prosecution makes the most of it.

But when they play in the courtroom a recording of the fight that happened the day before his death, and which eventually comes to blows, it seems rather damning.  She was furious by the end.  I didn’t like her chances with the jury at that point (especially because juries resent successful people, especially successful woman).  And ominously, their son Daniel (portrayed brilliantly by Milo Machado Graner) not only asks to make a final statement before the verdict, he wants to live away from his mother before he does that, so she has to move out (he’s already been accompanied during the whole trial by a young woman official from the court, who makes sure his mother can’t influence him).  He’s obviously been pondering something.

The scene of the argument is the most brilliant in the whole movie.  We actually see it as a flashback, though we’re aware the jury only hears it.  It’s the only time we see Samuel.  He claims to be stifled by his wife’s success, by the fact that her successful life dictates everything about their lives; they live according to her schedule, and he is in the background (which only seems fair in one way; she’s the primary money maker).  He’s homeschooling his son, perhaps out of guilt (she thinks it would be fine if the boy went to a regular school), and he does a lot to run the household, leaving him little time to write.

She doesn’t quite say that he doesn’t have the balls to write, though that seems to be the case.  She does argue, rightly I would say, that a real writer will always find time to write, and that she always has.  Furthermore, she says she’s just living the circumstances of her life.  She has no wish to dominate.  It’s one of those marital spats that couples have again and again, and it gets worse every time.  It’s the major evidence we have.  Did she (the next day) finally have enough, whack him on the head with a blunt object and toss him out the window?  Or did he, with his self-hating tendency that has been on display all along, decide in a moment of despair to end it all?[3]

All that matters to the jury, of course, but ultimately didn’t matter to me.[4]  I thought this movie was a brilliant portrayal of a difficult and complicated marriage which, one way or another, had a bad end.  A jury of Sandra’s peers had to figure that out.

I’m glad I wasn’t on that jury.

[1] Is he actually saying he didn’t like Perry Mason?

[2] The only time I was ever on a jury, the trial concerned two women who had gotten into fisticuffs at a Waffle House at 2:00 in the morning,

[3] One of the interesting things about this question is that neither alternative particularly makes sense.  She doesn’t seem like a person who would murder in cold blood, and her fury from the previous day seems to have subsided.  On the other hand, why would he suddenly decide, on that day, to kill himself?  But suicide is always a bit of a mystery.

[4] My wife does argue, rightly I think, that it makes a big difference what you think.  It’s a different movie if you think this woman is a murderer.