There’s something I can quite put my finger on to the introductory sequence of Anatomy of a Fall that immediately shattered the slight scepticism I had to overcome in order to go and see it. Justine Triet’s Palm d’Or is a stunningly written piece that digs with dramaturgical mastery in the remotest places of the human nature, cynically exposing both its fragility in the face of possible misinterpretations, and its perverted inclination to give in to them.
When Miloš Forman’s Mozart is summoned by the Emperor and questioned about his work on the politically feared figure of Figaro, the young and boisterous musician pitches a scene in which a duet turns into a trio, then a quartet, and so on. ‘Guess! Guess, Majesty. Imagine the longest time such a thing could last, then double it.’ Triet’s—and partner/co-writer Arthur Harari’s—joint bravura doesn’t live too far from that picture. Their naturalistic way of looking behind both institutional and domestic walls gives an exhilarating sense of truthfulness to passages you’d want to last forever.
One peculiar expedient Anatomy of a Fall resorts to, somehow managing to expand time to a quasi-transcending effect, is repetitions. The same facts are run through over and over again in different contexts while the central incident itself is either enacted or recalled multiple times and in all sorts of fashions. On location, within private conversations, deep inside the eyes of the characters—all phenomenal performers—and in our minds alike.
Cleverly picked to reflect and emphasise that trait, and a greatly defining element for the film in their own right, are the music tracks. The wonderful instrumental version of 50 Cents’s misogynistic classic P.I.M.P. (witty and bitter in-joke) by Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band almost conveys a state of trance while setting an interesting—and far less than obvious—dialogue with the cyclic flamenco structure of Albéniz’s Asturias.
I wonder, in retrospect, if the authors’ creative process has anything in common with those of their characters, if the film itself may have sparked from their own conversations about functioning as a couple while living through art and surviving success, the one thing in life that seems to be a problem regardless of its presence or absence. Apart from love, of course.