Anatomy of a Fall
For half of its running time, this does seem like a high-grade midday TV movie, and perhaps it’s not much more than that, but, if so, the grade is very high, and the second half does pursue its questions concerning relationships and epistemology for quite a distance.
Rather than saying more about those questions and that pursuit, let’s take the opportunity to comment on the diagnosis of the film’s failings offered by Richard Brody, a critic who sometimes tries too hard to be the most sophisticated aficionado on the block, but who is also sometimes just about the only one who escapes the herdlike mentality to which modern reviewers are so often prone. In the case of this Palme d’Or winner, Brody considers the whole thing to have been engineered according to the dictates of “high-minded consensus”, evincing “prefabricated attitudes” (the phrase appears twice) and resulting in a “numbingly conventional form”, but his presentation of evidence is bitchy and resentful, determined to interpret everything in the most negative light, as if, in other words, he is a prosecutor seeking justice for the victims of a crime (in this case, the “teen-age cinephile” Brody imagines passing from bewilderment to wrath at the accolades handed out at Cannes and elsewhere).
Perhaps there is nothing really new going on in the movie, nothing terribly interesting in terms of “form” (as those cinephiles love to say, with their rather fixed critical apparatus based on oppositions that are surely highly questionable), but this is very good drama, and who, today, is really making cinema that pushes the art form into new territory, aesthetic or otherwise, and, moreover, who does so masterfully, rather than as antiseptic experimentation destined to only ever appeal to a few “high-minded” critics and festival-goers? Additionally, I’m not sure that Brody has correctly interpreted the significance and ambiguity of the final scenes, although, admittedly, that’s not something he makes completely clear, which is to be expected, given his lack of interest in the story, dismissed on the grounds of being “not brisk but twisty, not stylish but unobtrusively informational”.
Rather than saying more about those questions and that pursuit, let’s take the opportunity to comment on the diagnosis of the film’s failings offered by Richard Brody, a critic who sometimes tries too hard to be the most sophisticated aficionado on the block, but who is also sometimes just about the only one who escapes the herdlike mentality to which modern reviewers are so often prone. In the case of this Palme d’Or winner, Brody considers the whole thing to have been engineered according to the dictates of “high-minded consensus”, evincing “prefabricated attitudes” (the phrase appears twice) and resulting in a “numbingly conventional form”, but his presentation of evidence is bitchy and resentful, determined to interpret everything in the most negative light, as if, in other words, he is a prosecutor seeking justice for the victims of a crime (in this case, the “teen-age cinephile” Brody imagines passing from bewilderment to wrath at the accolades handed out at Cannes and elsewhere).
Perhaps there is nothing really new going on in the movie, nothing terribly interesting in terms of “form” (as those cinephiles love to say, with their rather fixed critical apparatus based on oppositions that are surely highly questionable), but this is very good drama, and who, today, is really making cinema that pushes the art form into new territory, aesthetic or otherwise, and, moreover, who does so masterfully, rather than as antiseptic experimentation destined to only ever appeal to a few “high-minded” critics and festival-goers? Additionally, I’m not sure that Brody has correctly interpreted the significance and ambiguity of the final scenes, although, admittedly, that’s not something he makes completely clear, which is to be expected, given his lack of interest in the story, dismissed on the grounds of being “not brisk but twisty, not stylish but unobtrusively informational”.
Mini Review: For half its running time, this does seem like a high-grade midday movie, and perhaps it’s not much more than that, but, if so, the grade is very high, and the second half does pursue its questions concerning relationships and epistemology quite a distance. Brody sees it as a product of “high-minded consensus”, with “prefabricated attitudes and a numbingly conventional form”, but his presentation of evidence is bitchy and resentful, and I’m not sure he has correctly interpreted the final scenes.
Watch the Trailer