Anatomy of a Fall: Study in the humanity of postmodernism

Spoilers ahead.

Anatomy of a Fall (2023) has swept up numerous awards this year, including the Palme d’Or. And deservedly so. For while it is a display of postmodernism by numbers, it does something more in addressing issues that often invite resignation. Here, there is a human solution.

The unreliability of memory and the decline of metanarratives can be summed up as the acceptance that trying to understanding objective reality suffers from a subjective failing. Both concepts, central to the film and postmodern theory, are essentially the epistemological quest for truth. One that postmodernists will say is an impossible destination.

And there is no better form of that quest than the courtroom setting. Did Samuel, found dead early in the film at the bottom of the family’s large house, kill himself or was he murdered by his wife, Sandra?

A court verdict says yes or no definitively. But this is done through human testimony, recordings and character references — each unreliable in their own right. Watching a courtroom settle an issue often leaves one dissatisfied, however. Can we truly believe Samuel killed himself, as the court says, since we have no portrait of the scene not shown in the film? The parallel narrative that would find against Sandra lingers on in our heads.

As Dour, the chaperone for the young son Daniel during the trial, says there is an “unbearable lack” that consumes those unsure about what truly happened. To move past this, one has to simply decide, or as Daniel says: “invent belief.”

Precisely here is the human element, for Daniel does make a decision, which is that his mother is innocent. How he comes to that conclusion is in recalling a chat with his father, who tells him to “prepare for death” when they take the dog, Snoop, to the veterinarian. Daniel, in light of his father’s death, interprets this as his father signaling his own eventual suicide.

It’s speculative, but it is enough for Daniel to overcome the lack he suffers from. It echoes the earlier scene when the investigating officer takes the stand and is convinced of the mother’s guilt from a chaotic sound of a tussle from a recording. “We must interpret,” he tells the counsel when defending why he has invented his own belief.

Anatomy of Fall bathes in the lack. Towards the end, Sandra is present with her counsel and they share a tender conversation that carries the ambiguity of sexual tension. Such interactions have their baseline reality of what is happening, but also carry another, higher level of reality that is desire.

It’s a repeat of the opening scene of the film where Sandra is being interviewed by a literary student. When the recording of their conversation is entered into court, both the student and Sandra deny any sexual tension. The prosecuting counsel does say there is tension, the defending counsel rejects this — both of their truths are self-interested. For us the audience trying to find the objective truth, we can only interpret.