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If you love courtroom dramas, this Oscar-nominated film is not to be missed
Anatomy of a Fall may feel familiar at first but it immerses audiences in a different kind of legal thriller. Above, Sandra Hüller plays a writer accused of murdering her husband.
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Anatomy of a Fall may feel familiar at first but it immerses audiences in a different kind of legal thriller. Above, Sandra Hüller plays a writer accused of murdering her husband.
Les Films Pelléas
The Oscars love a courtroom drama, and part of the appeal of a traditional courtroom drama has always been the restoration of order. There is an open question, there is an investigation, there is a confrontation, and there is a climactic moment when something is revealed and settles the matter. Even where the system fails, the storytelling succeeds in getting to that resolution. The innocent may be convicted or the guilty set free, but the storyteller gets to the bottom of things, and in that sense, there is order again.
Plenty of Best Picture nominees have fallen into this category: Witness for the Prosecution, The Verdict, A Few Good Men. This year’s courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Fall, looks at this question in a different way.
Beyond the fact that it’s set in France and in the French justice system, the film is ultimately much less clear than these other examples about the answers to the central questions it seems to be asking. Because there is no huge revelation that makes everything snap into place, you could read it as a story of frustration or of stubbornly persistent chaos. But in its way, it, too, is about the disruption of order and its restoration. And that starts with the “P.I.M.P” cover.
Enter 50 Cent
At the beginning of the film from writer and director Justine Triet, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is in her home on a snowy mountain, being interviewed about her writing by a young woman named Zoe. Their discussion is friendly, even flirty. Her kind-hearted son, Daniel, is upstairs bathing his dog. Suddenly, the women are interrupted by a steel drum cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” that rattles the walls. Sandra explains that her husband, Samuel, is working upstairs and listening to music, and they try to keep talking. The song finally stops, but then, after a transparently peevish pause, it just starts over, louder. The music continues until the interview cannot go on. Chaos has won. Sandra chuckles and admits defeat, and Zoe leaves. Daniel goes for a walk.
Soon after, Daniel finds Samuel dead on the ground outside the house. Somehow, he has fallen from a height, and his bright red blood on the snow is itself a discombobulating image. Now, chaos has really won.
“We have to live with the monsters we create,” Justine Triet told NPR’s Scott Simon, when he asked whether characters linger with her after a film. “I’ve been living with these people for three years, and I think I’ll probably live with them for at least another year.”
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“We have to live with the monsters we create,” Justine Triet told NPR’s Scott Simon, when he asked whether characters linger with her after a film. “I’ve been living with these people for three years, and I think I’ll probably live with them for at least another year.”
Les Films Pelléas
The rest of the film is spurred by the investigation of how Samuel died. Despite a lack of direct evidence, Sandra is charged with killing him because she was the only person there. As a result, much of her trial is consumed by questions about her marriage. Was it bad enough that she threw her husband out the window, or pushed him off the balcony? Was it bad enough that he jumped? Did he, in fact, just fall?
The anatomy of a courtroom
Triet’s version of a courtroom drama looks different — at least to an American audience familiar with, say, Law & Order — in part because the physical courtroom itself is much more multidimensional and more complex in its use of space.
In most American takes on this genre, you get a courtroom that is laid out in what we might think of as a church formation. The gallery, sitting on benches, faces the judge, who sits on their elevated platform. When a witness testifies, they sit beside the judge, facing the gallery, while they speak. The jury sits perpendicular to both judge and gallery, visually aligned with neither. The attorneys wait with the audience, watching, until it’s time to “go on.” It’s quite flat, with communication running in two directions at most.
American audiences will find the layout of the French courtroom differs from what they are used to seeing in on-screen legal dramas.
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American audiences will find the layout of the French courtroom differs from what they are used to seeing in on-screen legal dramas.
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The layout in Anatomy of a Fall is very different. The courtroom has a square formation. Think of the bench as north and the gallery as south; these still face each other. The defense is arranged along the east side and the prosecution along the west. Jurors are up on the bench with the judges. The advocate general (basically the prosecutor) has an elevated box from which he can descend, and Sandra sits just behind and above her lawyers. When a witness testifies, they stand behind a waist-high barrier facing the judge and jurors, rather than sitting in a box by the judge.
The Anatomy courtroom can be disorienting at first; it’s initially not easy to know where Sandra is exactly, or where she’s looking. Sometimes you can’t tell quite where the hard-nosed (and red-robed) advocate general comes from when he questions her. The process is surprisingly freewheeling — the attorneys freely argue back and forth with each other, and the advocate general asks Sandra questions during testimony from others.
Antoine Reinartz as advocate general in Anatomy of a Fall.
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Antoine Reinartz as advocate general in Anatomy of a Fall.
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The square formation and elevated seating allow for a wide variety of camera angles, and Triet doesn’t offer an establishing shot at the outset to explain the space to the audience.
Instead, the very first time we see the courtroom, we have a bad seat in the gallery, back in a corner where our view is obstructed. Zoe, the woman who conducted the interview in the opening scene, is in the middle of her testimony, and the court is hearing the tape she made of her interview with Sandra. Specifically, the first time we find ourselves in the courtroom, everyone there is listening to the “P.I.M.P.” cover. The shots keep switching their angles and techniques: a steady push in on Sandra, then a wider static shot of just the bench, then a medium shot of Zoe that begins to push in on her, too — but in a shot that’s conspicuously handheld and much shakier. There are big parts of the courtroom at this point, the courtroom that will be the setting of much of the rest of the film, that we haven’t even seen. It’s very (intentionally) disorganized from a sensory perspective.
The son who settles the story
Eleven-year-old Daniel didn’t witness his father’s death yet his arrival brings clarity — if not order — to the courtroom.
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Eleven-year-old Daniel didn’t witness his father’s death yet his arrival brings clarity — if not order — to the courtroom.
Les Films Pelléas
The first long look at the courtroom comes a bit later when 11-year-old Daniel arrives to testify. The scene begins with the camera seemingly nestled against a high ceiling, in the center rear of the room. It looks down, putting the whole courtroom in the frame at once. This shot is neutral, normal, explanatory. The camera holds here for fully 30 seconds, which is an eternity in movie time, and especially in courtroom drama time. The arrival of this very long, very wide shot is jarring, and it changes the tone. It calms the restless camera. It calms the jitters of not fully understanding the space we’re looking at.
In this sense, Daniel’s arrival starts to create order. A couple of minutes later, as he’s being questioned about inconsistencies in his memory, he looks back and forth between the advocate general and Sandra’s defense attorney, who are standing on both sides of him and arguing about his testimony. For almost a minute and a half, Triet stays with an unbroken shot of his face. The camera just swings from side to side as he looks from one of these men to the other and back, so that he is always facing the lens. Even when he looks over at his mother, we don’t cut to her, as would be the traditional move. Instead, we remain with Daniel.
Two different kinds of order from chaos
So if we know that Daniel’s arrival in the courtroom brings order to the form of the film, it makes sense that he’s a source of order in the story. But how can that be? Even he doesn’t actually know what happened to his father; he was out walking the dog. If order comes from getting the facts, it seems impossible that he can be the answer to the messiness of the drama playing out in front of him.
Furthermore, it’s no spoiler to say that it’s not at all clear that Daniel is telling all of the literal truth about what he saw and heard. He is protecting his mother. So again, it might seem unlikely that he can provide any answers.
I think the solution to this tension is simply that Anatomy of a Fall is about a different kind of order. It’s not order that comes from certainty, but from clarity. Nobody here seems to have certainty about what happened — even Sandra might or might not, depending on what you believe about her. But what Daniel manages to achieve by the end of the film is clarity. He knows what he wants to do, he knows what he thinks is right to do, and he knows what he thinks should happen. And he can articulate all those things to people who are hesitant to listen to him. (There is, I suppose, some irony that might be inferred from the fact that Daniel is visually impaired, but I don’t think Triet is going for anything quite so on-the-nose.)
Even when Daniel is not being fully truthful, he is the one entirely trustworthy person in the story. Whatever he is doing, he is doing out of love alone, while his parents both acted at times out of love, but also out of anger and jealousy, resentment and selfishness. Again, he has clarity — in this case, clarity of motive.
So while this might seem like an unconventional courtroom drama Oscar nominee, it shares that theme of a courtroom as a step on the way to restoring order, even if it’s only the order of knowing what you think is right.
Prince on the custom motorcycle featured in Purple Rain.
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Wendy Melvoin, guitarist for Prince’s genre bending band The Revolution, remembers one of their most iconic songs started with an idea — and a challenge — from the boss himself.
Prince broached the topic during a band rehearsal. “He came to the table with this beautiful idea … most of the songs [on the album] had already been done,” says Melvoin, “He said ‘I have this idea and sounds a little like this…whattaya you guys got?’”
What Wendy had was an idea for a mournful cascade of guitar chords that proved the perfect starting point.
“I came up with that intro and that chord progression to get us into the song,” she adds. “And it ended up being one of the most iconic intros to a pop ballad ever.”
The song Purple Rain would become the surprising, anthemic climax for a film of the same name that emerged as one of the most successful and influential musical films in history. The movie hit theaters 40 years ago, breaking barriers in the music world while signaling the ascendancy of Prince as a pop music superstar.
Putting Purple Rain on the silver screen
Filmed around the band’s Minneapolis hometown, Purple Rain had a simple story. Prince’s character — known only as The Kid – is rocked by his dad constantly beating his mother at home, struggling to connect with his bandmembers and a new romantic interest, a beautiful singer named Apollonia.
Drummer Bobby Rivkin, known onstage as Bobby Z, says the idea of showcasing Prince’s songs and The Revolution in a film was inspired by the success of MTV and its focus on music videos.
“Prince was always someone who took a step bigger than the cultural [stuff] that was happening at the times,” he adds. “Once MTV started playing his videos, I think he just gravitated to something bigger and said ‘I’ll just take it to the next level.’’”
Melvoin says she and The Revolution — including Rivkin, keyboardists Lisa Coleman and Matt Fink and bassist Brown Mark — found out they would be working on a movie when Prince announced it in a matter-of-fact way at a rehearsal. But she wasn’t worried about whether she could act or how the band would look onscreen.
“I guess if I had any concern back then, it was just literally, ‘was the story going to be any good?’” she says, laughing. “I didn’t have any doubt the music sequences would be fantastic. But I didn’t have a good sense of whether the narrative of the film was going to work.”
Turns out, it all worked pretty well. Purple Rain was a hit, with the film and its soundtrack earning an Oscar, two Grammy awards and status as a groundbreaking musical film.
It also introduced a film audience to Prince’s scorching performance style, his unerring ability to craft hit tunes, and his distinctive fashion sense. Prince’s network of bands and performers also got some attention – including the girl-fronted group Apollonia 6 and the funk band The Time.
The Time lead singer Morris Day and his onstage foil Jerome Benton became the film’s comic center, with the two riffing on a version of Abbott and Costello’s classic routine “Who’s on First?”.
“Honestly, we weren’t trying to be funny … we always clowned around at the time because we were young,” Day says, responding to questions via email. He noted, even though the cast took acting and dance classes in preparation for filming, “we were just being ourselves. If anything, I was more conscious of being cool than funny.”
Morris Day of The Time performs in Chicago in 1983, before Purple Rain came out.
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He’s not surprised people are still talking about the film four decades after its initial release.
“The film was groundbreaking on so many levels … it was the first of its kind,” adds Day, who says he’s only watched the film in its entirety one time, at its Hollywood premiere on July 26, 1984. “It somehow reminds people of a special period in their lives during the ‘80s, which is a period we all at times wish we could reclaim.”
Building the drama in Purple Rain
Fans know the film tells a more combative story behind the genesis of the song Purple Rain.
Onscreen, Melvoin and her then-girlfriend, keyboardist Lisa Coleman write the song, fighting a reluctant Prince – known only as The Kid in the movie – to let The Revolution play it onstage.
“Everytime we give you a song, you say you’re going to use it, but you never do,” Melvoin shouts at Prince during the scene, delivering some of the best acting from the musicians who mostly fill out the cast. “You think we’re doing something behind your back…you’re just being paranoid as usual.”
When Prince finally agrees to play Purple Rain onstage at the Minneapolis club First Avenue – launching into an emotional rendition topped by one of the best guitar solos in pop music – he wows the crowd and saves the band. But Melvoin says now that the friction they acted out was “movie magic” conjured to build a story; in real life, she, Lisa and Prince were very close collaborators.
Prince, alongside Wendy Melvoin (left) and Lisa Coleman (right) accepts Purple Rain‘s Oscar for best original score in 1985.
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Powered by hits like the title track and the percolating dance jam I Would Die 4 U, Purple Rain burst like a lavender-tinged explosion across the pop culture landscape – launching Prince’s growing fame into the stratosphere.
The innovative dance hit When Doves Cry, recorded by Prince with no bass guitar, became his first Number One single on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles list. That was followed by his second Number One single, the rock and soul classic Let’s Go Crazy, which showcased his guitar skills at a time when rock guitar wasn’t heard often on R&B records.
Giving fans a peek behind the mystique
Prince had developed a mystique by rarely talking to the press. So, in the days before YouTube and Tik Tok, Purple Rain offered a sustained – if fictionalized – look at the inner workings of the band and his origin story for fans eager to know more.
And it centered a group of performers who were a mix of identities and ethnicities in the Midwest, making music that crossed all kinds of cultural barriers, at a time when people like that were rarely seen on the silver screen.
“That film was Prince’s version of social media,” Melvoin says. “This is funk rock and nobody’s seen a movie based on this kind of life. It [was] a trip for people to see.”
But there were also criticisms. Many of the film’s performers were amateurs, which showed in their performances. And female characters were often treated badly on screen: in one scene, Jerome Benton gets rid of a hostile woman confronting Day by tossing her into a dumpster.
“Given today’s culture, I’m certain there are moments in the film that ruffle a few feathers,” Day says. “Overall, I would like to think we did something great. And based on the overwhelming majority [of public reaction], I believe we did.”
The film ultimately proved the perfect showcase for Prince’s expansive creativity – from his ruffled shirts and big shouldered clothes to his mix of religion and sexuality in lyrics, innovative ways of recording and his seemingly endless supply of high-quality songs.
Bobby Rivkin, otherwise known as Bobby Z, during a recording session in 1989.
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“MTV opened the door a little bit — just a teeny crack of light — and he would kick it open,” Rivkin adds. “He was innovative in fashion and culture. And it was a remarkable time for him. From humble beginnings to control [of] black culture, crossover culture … rock, funk, pop … He was on fire for quite a while.”
Continuing on without the boss
A couple of years and albums later, Prince disbanded The Revolution. But the group has reunited a few times – notably for a benefit concert after Rivkin had his first heart attack in 2010 – and after Prince died in 2016, at age 57 from an accidental fentanyl overdose. More recently, the group came together last month to perform during a five-day event in Minneapolis celebrating Purple Rain’s 40th anniversary.
Both Melvoin and Rivkin say they hope The Revolution can play more shows commemorating Purple Rain’s anniversary over the next year. But they also admit it can be challenging performing without their dynamic leader and frontman, even as playing together helps them process the loss.
“After he passed, it’s the only thing that we could think of to do — to be together and grieve,” Melvoin says.
And what would The Kid himself think about the legacy of his blockbuster film and album? Day says he’s not sure.
“[Prince] never liked staying in the past,” the singer adds. “He was always evolving. Once Purple Rain was done, he was on to the next. But now that I’m thinking about it, he might have thrown a big celebration at Paisley Park for the fans. Probably would have been one hell of a jam session.”
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Josh Flagg says Ben Affleck might actually be putting down roots in Brentwood as opposed to it being a pit stop … telling us he’s heard the guy might be quietly buying a pad there.
We got the ‘Million Dollar Listing’ star at the Plaza Hotel in New York City — and our photog asked him about Ben and Jennifer Lopez publicly listing their Beverly Hills mansion for $68 million … and what the implications for that might be big picture.
Remember … Ben and Jen only just bought the place in 2023, and Josh says the quick flip here makes it look like they are getting divorced … something we’ve been reporting is going to happen for a while now.
We broke the story … Ben and J Lo were quietly trying to sell the estate off-market — but it clearly didn’t work out, and now they’ve going public with the house sale.
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As you know … Ben’s been staying in a Brentwood rental since moving out of the marital Bev Hills mansion, and J Lo’s been spending a lot of time on her own too … first in Europe, and then more recently in New York to celebrate her birthday week.
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But, get this … Josh says he recently heard Ben was quietly in escrow on something in Brentwood … so BA may not be renting anymore after all — at least that’s what JF’s floating.
As for the Bev Hills mansion — which Ben and Jen paid over $60 million for — Josh explains why Bennifer might not be taking a huge financial hit … although, they definitely ain’t gonna be turning a profit either.
Interesting stuff all around … especially that tidbit about Ben, if it turns out to be right.
Kathleen Hanna of The Julie Ruin performs onstage at the 2016 Panorama NYC Festival – Day 2 at Randall’s Island on July 23, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Chicago with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Kathleen Hanna and panelists Meredith Scardino, Peter Grosz, and Mo Rocca Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
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