Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)

The prosecutor as a critic

Amir Siadat

I do not remember the last time which character in which movie got on my nerves as much as the prosecutor in Anatomy of a Fall. I think his comments were annoying to me because I had almost assumed Sandra was innocent until the middle of the movie. Perhaps the reason for this initial antipathy- which eventually turned into admiration and respect - was that the prosecutor analyzed the aspects of the "scene" that I had carelessly passed by, with sharper eyes and with more sensitive eyes. In other words, he points to ideas that should have come to my mind as a viewer (And if such ideas came to my mind in some cases, the accompaniment of the narration with Sandra did not allow me to take them seriously)! While we are "watching" in a situation similar to the general public inside the courtroom, the prosecutor is in a sense similar to a critic, that is, a cynical, disruptive and "interpretive" one. Maybe in some moments, for example, when he tries to talk about the Misogyny of the song of 50 Cent, we think that he is exaggerating and making irrelevant "meaning". But later, when we find out some of Sandra's secrets and some of her dark side, we will probably find his interpretation thought-provoking! When he tries to find the traces of Sandra's personal issues in her stories, he actually looks like a critic who sees the author's life and art as mirrors of one another. When we see Samuel recording his argument with Sandra in order to draw inspiration from it when writing the story, we'll probably acknowledge, like the prosecutor, that drama is inseparable from the couple's life. For a moment, I thought to myself as if this stubborn "critic" had seen Billy Wilder's witness for the prosecution and has not forgotten that there was also a crime involved and a blonde German woman who, like Sandra, had a language problem, knew "plot and conspiracy" well, and even though she claimed she was crazy about her husband, in the end she spilled his blood! In the end, I felt that I should have taken the judgments of this gloomy prosecutor more seriously. To be honest, Sandra's way of celebrating and giggling after being acquitted tormented me and was unpleasant. Samuel's pitiful situation, who has suffered eternal torment and guilty conscience, has been repeatedly betrayed, and the plot gave him a small chance to appear on the screen, makes one think that he deserved at least a “mourning”! Sandra claims in the court that she cannot convey her meaning in French completely, but can we be sure that she speaks English to tell the truth?