Movie Review: Anatomy of a Fall

The new movie “Anatomy of a Fall” is a foreign language film from France that based on its very high 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes might just win this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. As a screenwriter, one of the very first things you learn about screenwriting is to “show not tell”. This is a movie, not a book, and in a movie, it is always better to show action and subtext rather than have a great deal of dialogue. Regardless of anyone’s opinion about this movie, it is mostly about a great deal of dialogue, violating this fundamental rule of screenwriting. One problem with this much dialogue is that trying to support a “too long” of 2 1/2 hours with this much talking and less showing is much harder for the audience to sit through.

This entire story is about an impressive log cabin, somewhere in France, and a man who falls from the attic and is found dead by his son. The rest of this story is all about the French police, lawyers and the eventual murder trial, trying to piece together what happened to this man who fell do his death. The story becomes more and more complex as new information about the relationship between a wife Sandra Voyter played by Sandra Hüller and a husband Samuel played by Samuel Theis is brought out in court, during the murder trial. Seeing how a French court works is one of the most interesting parts about this film.

In one scene there is a huge argument between Sandra and Samuel that has acting that is as good as the scene in “Marriage Story”, 2019, between Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. This is one of those films that tries to force the audience to figure out what really happened and as a result, there is too much uncovering of new information and not enough final resolution.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is too high 96%, with my rating at 85%, mainly for the acting, subtracting from the story which was boring in too many areas and a 2 1/2 run time that was way too long.