Anatomy of a Fall

Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, trial lawyers will have trouble embracing this film. Importantly, the film is in three languages, including English.

Let me start by saying that Sandra Hüller is in the extraordinary position of starring in two films nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Here she plays a wife accused of killing her husband and in The Zone of Interest she plays the wife of the Auschwitz commandant.

While I sent out an earlier review that I firmly disliked Zone she saves Anatomy with a firm, dominating performance. Her nomination for a lead actress Oscar reflects that reality.

Here, she lives with a distracted husband and young, emotionally damaged son in a chalet in France. Asleep in one room, while her son walked their dog, her husband was found dead in the front yard.

The movie leaves a trial jury and the viewer trying to decide if he committed suicide or was pushed to his death from a third story window by his wife. Obviously, she was indicted for murder and the bulk of the film covers the trial proceedings.

And that was the movie’s central problem. Despite wonderful performances by Swann Arlaud as her defense lawyer and Antoine Reinartz as the relentless prosecutor, as a defense lawyer with over 50 years of trial experience I was left shouting “objection” repeatedly!

While I’m not going to give away the plot where Ms. Hüller could have either been convicted or acquitted, the French court system as displayed by Director Justine Triet tragically substitutes opinion and conjecture for actual facts. This would have never been permitted in an American courtroom.

So be prepared whether or not you are cursed with trial experience like mine. Though the film has received great praise I kept wondering if most of the voters were non-lawyers.