Arthur Harari, Justine Triet
the first time Elizabeth meets Gracie and Joe. “It sort of unwraps the foundation that causes all the rest of it,” she says. “My hope was always that whoever watch it would feel this kind of tension and mix of the dark humor and the real genuine sincerity and humanity.”
Though it revolves around the trial of a German novelist, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), accused of murdering her husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” hinges on the complexities of marriage itself — the love given and harm inflicted, by people sharing deep, long-term intimacy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Triet’s collaborator on its script, her husband, says that a pivotal fight scene between the spouses was the toughest to write, precisely because it had to both indict and exonerate Sandra in the eyes of the audience.
“It scared us, not only because the content had to be subtle and avoid the clichés and ponderousness of this kind of ‘meaningful’ scene, but also because of its dramatic importance,” Harari says. “It needed to live up to the way it had been teased throughout and had to tip the film into a vertiginous dimension with lasting effect on everything that came after.”
Triet says she counted “20 or 30” versions they’d written of the scene before they got it right. “The core of the movie’s in this scene,” she insists. Harari credits her for identifying the north star that gave them a sense of a purpose as they refined what in many moments was a knock-down, drag-out battle between husband and wife. “Justine would say, ‘we need to feel love behind it all,’ ” he remembers.
Ultimately, they chose to delay an explosion of violence in order to underscore the compassion shared between them rather than the act that marks a point of no return. “They try by all means to continue to communicate, even if it’s a terrible struggle,” he says. “We felt it was important to convey the impression that they still have, or have had, a tenderness and respect that was genuinely loving.”
Adds Triet: “all of the elements were so dense and contradictory — life itself putting you in a naturally occurring conundrum that I had to find a way to portray.”