‘Anatomy of a Fall’: Screenwriting Takeaways

Logline of Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall:  Sandra, her husband Samuel, and their son Daniel live a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found dead, the police question question if he was murdered or committed suicide, and Sandra becomes the main suspect. What follows is an investigation into the circumstances of Samuel’s death and an unsettling journey into the depths of Sandra’s and Samuel’s conflicted relationship. 

Script Can Be Found Here

Summary of Anatomy of a Fall:

Anatomy of a Fall begins in a French chalet just outside of Grenoble with student Zoe (Camille Rutherford) interviewing Sandra (Sandra Hüller). Unfortunately, their interview is cut short as husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) blasts music from upstairs. Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), their half-blind song, goes out for a walk. Upon his return, Daniel finds his father dead in the snow having (presumably) fallen to his death. Upon inspecting the deceased, the coroner believes that Samuel had suffered blunt trauma to his head before hitting the ground. 

Vincent (Swann Arlaud), a friend and lawyer of Sandra, comes to gather more information. Sandra notes that Daniel had blasted a song deliberately to piss her off. She then recounts more of what happened from her point of view, specifically that she heard him working in the attic and that she was asleep when he presumably fell towards his death. Vincent notes that there’s a bruise on his arm, and she mentions that it’s because she repeatedly bangs her arm against one of the kitchen counters. She also mentions that awhile back, he vomited some pills, presumably from a suicide attempt. Additionally, Daniel is interviewed about his parents’ fights, and law enforcement comes to the house to stage re-enactments to gather data, which Sandra and Daniel witness.  

One year later, the trial occurs. In addition to interviewing Zoe, the experts demonstrate the re-enactments, and Samuel’s psychiatrist is interviewed. The prosecution (Antoine Reinartz) is relentless in his cross-examination of Sandra; perhaps the most difficult and emotionally grueling part of the ordeal is when a secret audio recording of an argument that occurred between Sandra and Samuel comes to light. This recording occurred the day before Samuel’s death, and it lays bear all of their major marital issues (i.e., financial problems, her “plundering” his writing to create her own novel, him never having the time to write, etc). The argument ends with sounds of physical violence that are particularly difficult for everyone (especially Daniel) to hear. 

After nearly losing Snoop to Daniel’s botched experiment with aspirin, Daniel gives his testimony at the trial. Daniel talks about how, in retrospect, a conversation with his father before his death indicated that he was going to commit suicide. Sandra is acquitted, but ambiguity still lingers. We don’t know for sure if she did it (or not), or if her son is covering for her (or not).  

What does Anatomy of a Fall do well?

Full Disclosure: Because the script is partially in French, I was unable to read it. The below analysis based on my viewing.

1. Title – The further we go back in time via the court testimonies, the more we see how this marriage fell apart; we learn that the couple never got over the son’s accident, that Sandra was cheating, that the couple had financial problems and creative issues, that there was domestic violence, and that Samuel had attempted suicide. All of these seemed to be stumbling blocks that caused the marriage to fall/destroy itself. The double-meaning of the title lends itself to a deeper reading of the film, so it’s not just a forensic exploration of a fall, it’s a post mortem of a relationship. 
2. Almost-Immediate Inciting Incident – As my Save the Cat experiment is proving again and again and again, a catalyst/inciting incident doesn’t have to happen between pages 10 and 20; it can happen within the first five or seven minutes. I really appreciated this in Anatomy of a Fall because we’re jumping right into the story. The film doesn’t waste time on exposition; the exposition occurs as as byproduct of the action.
3. Whodunit – Part of what kept me engaged in the film was its ambiguity – was it suicide? Or murder? Or something else? As I attempted to guess whodunit with Pat, I was amazed that, in effect, it became evident that it was suicide. Perhaps my cliched (?) line of thinking was that it was neither going to be a murder nor a suicide but a third option. I was kind of amazed that the narrative seemed to indicate that it was a suicide because it seemed so obvious.
4. Animal Metaphor – Like in May December, Anatomy of a Fall employs animal metaphors, but here it seems way more on-the-nose in that Daniel staged an experiment of having Snoop overdose on medication because his father did the same. Whereas the May December metaphor seems a little less direct (i.e., their encounter happened in a pet store, the chrysalis/butterfly metaphor exists but there’s no direct connection), here there is a direct parallel (i.e. what happened to Dad happened to Snoop). Again, whenever I see an animal metaphor, I can’t help but think that any and all of our actions as humans aren’t as high or as noble-minded as we’d like to think; at the end of the day, we’re animals. (I’m open in the comments of hearing more).
5. Depth/Shades of Grey – This couple’s life was messy AF – neither Sandra nor Samuel are 100% good or evil; both of them have redeemable qualities as well as some horrendous ones (i.e., as a writer, I was somewhat horrified that Sandra plundered Samuel’s work and turned it into her novel). Shades of grey humanizes characters and make them feel more real.
6. Exposition-as-Ammunition – One of the best techniques in screenwriting is using exposition-as-ammunition (in which a character uses the exposition of another situation against another). Here, the bulldog court lawyer does so brutally. Given that the content of his argument is the wreckage of Sandra’s and Samuel’s marriage, his cross-examination may be difficult to watch, but at least it’s not boring.
7. Tenuous Nature of Reality – The further we advance in the story via the court testimonies, the further we go back in time. Towards the end of the trial, Sandra’s novel becomes evidence for the problems in the marriage and the possible motive for her crime; in other words, the characters are examining fiction to determine the truth, which is a deft choice given that, as artists, Sandra and Samuel seem to weave in and out of reality and fiction. The ambiguity at the end heightens that. We’d like to believe that she’s totally innocent, but we’re not quite sure.

Anatomy of a Fall was compelling and felt like a French version of such tense courtroom dramas as A Few Good Men.

Open to your thoughts…