Anatomy of a Fall

Justine Triet and Arthur Harari wrote a screenplay that deliberately never confirms guilt, and that ambiguity is the structural spine of the film. Nearly the entire second half plays out in courtroom testimony and flashback fragments that contradict each other, forcing the audience into the position of a juror rather than a passive viewer. Study how the couple's recorded argument, replayed and reinterpreted from different angles, functions as the film's central evidence and its central formal device; the same audio means something different each time it returns, depending on who is listening and what has just been argued in court. The screenplay also uses the blind son as a narrative filter, since his testimony is the one piece of evidence untainted by adult motive, and his uncertainty becomes the film's moral center. Dialogue throughout is procedural and clipped, avoiding speechifying even in courtroom scenes where theatricality would be easy to fall into.

What to watch for

Notice how the same recorded argument is recontextualized each time it is replayed.

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