When we talk about falling, what are we talking about?
In the second half of Anatomy of a Death by Fall, I suddenly realized that I had fallen into the director's narrative trap.
They were so obvious because all the characters fell into the traps; they were also so hidden that it was hard to realize that the audience was in the traps as well.
When the movie is finished, and you think about the title of the movie - which is also fake - it has nothing to do with falling at all.
Sandra, Samuel and their visually impaired son Daniel have been living in the remote mountains for a year. One day, Samuel is found dead outside the house and the police immediately launch an investigation into the suspected murder. In uncertainty, Sandra is charged: was it suicide or murder? A year later, Daniel attends his mother's trial, a true dissection of his parents' relationship.
There should be a best acting award for dogs as well!
From the title of the movie to the beginning of the husband's death, the director is leading the characters and the audience to speculate on the truth of the death. We, if we see it to the end, will realize that no matter how we interpret it, we can't get to the truth.
For example, our interpretation of the suspect's behavior: the wife concealed the fact that they had a fight the day before her husband's death and the source of the bruises on his hands. As a suspect, the quarrel is already suspicious because it creates a motive to kill; and concealing it is an added offense. If no crime had been committed, why conceal it? Her reason was particularly simple, because although she hadn't committed a crime, she didn't want to be treated as a suspect either.
But what does life tell us? People are fickle; they can be exuberant one moment and desperate the next. How many suicides are premeditated? How many suicides are impulsive? How many suicides are committed without warning, just seeing a window and jumping out of it? We can spend the first hour making plans for a life full of thirty years of despair, but the moment it's done, realize it's all meaningless, and a window of relief appears right in front of us.
Without an all-encompassing perspective on the information, all self-constructed or other-constructed narratives lead us to the wrong conclusions.
In the end, when the son makes his statement as the final witness, he lets the mother off the hook, but that doesn't mean the truth; it only means that one interpretation has prevailed over the other.
One might say: with so little information, errors in judgment are common.
But the answer is: with so little information, we don't make judgments.
The director's attitude is neutral, she knows everything as a God's point of view, without judging the facts and characters, she simply describes the subtlety and unknowability of life.