I thought the movie was fantastic, a film that expects its audience to be both mature and intelligent. While Sandra Huller’s performance is receiving well-deserved praise, I was even more impressed with Milo Machado Graner.
People who want a tidy ending conclusively determining guilt or innocence will be disappointed, but whether or not she did it is almost beside the point. The film is really the autopsy of a deteriorating marriage and the devastation it can cause all parties, including children. It’s only thinly disguised as a murder mystery and a courtroom drama. I also saw the film as a representation of how societal judgement will descend like a ton of bricks on an unconventional, successful woman any time it is given the opportunity to do so.
This is the kind of film that you really like to see getting nominated because it's obviously pushing boundaries. Subverting expectations.
That being said it would probably drive me crazy. I'm not sure how well I deal with subverted expectations these days, being old and whatnot.
I was watching a '40s B Western last week. A Durango Kid film starring Bill Elliott. A typical film. Hollywood made a zillion of these. The Bill Elliott films seem particularly violent. 20 -30 people getting gunned down per movie. . Elliott will always shoot a guy three or four times when it seems like one shot would probably do the job. When they're not shooting each other they're pummeling one another with their fists . I usually don't pay much attention to these things when I watch. I love looking at the carriages and the buggys. Some of the films are extremely well made and there's always a few good shots at least in every one of them. It's mindless junk food for your brain.
So I was watching this film and Bill Elliott meets another guy in a saloon and within 30 seconds they're in a gunfight. Bill out draws the other guy and shoots him. As he's falling Bill shoots him three more times. Just to make sure.
So I'm thinking" Christ is this ever violent!" Then I think" Well, That's Entertainment!" and you know it, it is!"
Depictions of violence are a leading form of entertainment. I've been thinking about that a lot. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that when we give everybody a bunch of guns they start shooting each other.
After the Bill Elliott movie I watched some Japanese samurai film. No subtitles. Everyone sat down to stately tea ceremonies after which they got up and hacked each other's limbs off. It was obviously a low budget programmer. Everyday entertainment in Japan.
Haven't seen it yet. I might get around to it now that Roy has weighed in. I do have a personal anecdote.
A friend told me, "Stop Making Sense" is getting a theatrical re-release, and there are worse ways to spend a Tuesday afternoon.
Popcorn and beverage in hand, we settled in to await Mr. Byrne and Co.
The "Anatomy of a Fall" trailer came up. Talk about a preemptive buzzkill.
If I was working in promotion, the copy would read: IF THIS FILM DOESN'T BRING YOU RIGHT DOWN, SEEK PSYCHIATRIC HELP IMMEDIATELY!
It was mostly the juxtaposition that got to us. I'm reminded of taking my mom to the movies in the 1980's. There would be ten minutes of teasers the next round of teenage slasher pictures before we could enjoy Shirley MacLaine's latest light comedy.
Don't get me wrong - I appreciate dark. Yesterday I watched "City Of Life And Death". Right up there with "Glengary Glen Ross" on the list of great films I never want to see again. In the 1970's the local PBS station corrupted me with DeSica and Kurosawa. Imagine being a school kid with his whole life ahead of him. Then get him to watch "Umberto D".
At least the marketing for "Anatomy Of A Fall" was honest. Going on the trailer to "Prick Up Your Ears" I bought tickets for what was supposed to be a witty comedic look at the swinging sixties. I went with my sister, brother-in-law, and our 13 year old cousin. Oops. Thank God we left mom behind for that one.
I think films like these are hard for American audiences because they don’t have good guys and bad guys and the filmmakers don’t tell the audience to think. I liked the movie and thought the acting was great, but when thinking about it as “best picture “ I am reminded of an episode of Hell’s Kitchen in which a contestant made fish and chips. Ramsey said that’s really great fish and chips, but you know, it’s just fish and chips and this is a show about fine dining. So I’ll say this about Anatomy of a Fall: it is a really good courtroom drama, but it’s a courtroom drama…
Sigh. I always feel left out this time of year. I never see any of the movies. I'm sure I'll get around to Oppenheimer, but I resisted because I know I'll be yelling at the screen. Like Titanic, which have not and have no intention to see, it's a matter of extreme knowledge of a very specific historical event. ( Titanic pissed off Neil deGrasse Tyson because they got the stars wrong - of course). I know they got the horizon effect wrong even without seeing it. I'll be yelling That's wrong, That's wrong That's wrong the whole time I watch Oppenheimer. I understand, way too deep in the weeds for norms, but I still reserve the right to do so.
Me, my feeds are blowing up over how hideous the new live-action Avatar (Airbender, not blue goobers) is. And it is. As if that dirty, no good, waste of perfectly good protoplasm M. Night Shalaman hadn't already desecrated it enough.
Just thinking about the ambiguity here, "Did she or didn't she?" and how it seems the film leaves this unresolved, made me wonder about a related question: To what extent do we identify with (and root for) the protagonist of a film simply because they are the protagonist? Maybe truth or questions of guilt or innocence have nothing to do with it, maybe it's just a mechanical process: The film is shown from a certain character's point of view, we will tend to identify with that character, right or wrong.
This effect carried me through multiple seasons of Breaking Bad, rooting for Walt even as he became progressively more monstrous, and then just recently I felt a shock when watching Day of the Jackal, realizing that I always feel some disappointment at the end when the assassin's bullet doesn't find its home in de Gaulle's head. And it's not that I'm hostile to de Gaulle or a fan of political assassination, it's just the effect of seeing the Jackal's meticulous preparations, and wanting in some small part to see that carry through to success. Of course, I'm also seeing Inspector LaBelle's clever detective work and rooting for him to succeed, but who I'm rooting for at the moment doesn't have anything to do with right or wrong, or whether the character is a "good" person (the Jackal, for example, uses a woman for sex and then murders her in cold blood, what a monster he is) but simply whose eyes I'm looking through at that moment.
Another example, Anatomy of a Murder: Was Ben Gazarra's character really innocent? Do we really care? We come to identify so much with his attorney, played by Jimmy Stewart (and how can you NOT identify with Jimmy Stewart?) that it's not a question of guilt or innocence, it just becomes a matter of wanting to see "our" side win.
All of this has obvious political implications, our moral compasses can be easily deflected from True North by the magnetism of an attractive or interesting character, when we come to adopt that character's point of view as our own. We are a shifty and untrustworthy species.
I thought the movie was fantastic, a film that expects its audience to be both mature and intelligent. While Sandra Huller’s performance is receiving well-deserved praise, I was even more impressed with Milo Machado Graner.
People who want a tidy ending conclusively determining guilt or innocence will be disappointed, but whether or not she did it is almost beside the point. The film is really the autopsy of a deteriorating marriage and the devastation it can cause all parties, including children. It’s only thinly disguised as a murder mystery and a courtroom drama. I also saw the film as a representation of how societal judgement will descend like a ton of bricks on an unconventional, successful woman any time it is given the opportunity to do so.
When I saw that image at the top, I thought, "Little Danny from the Shining takes the Stand, another of Stephen King's successful books."
This is the kind of film that you really like to see getting nominated because it's obviously pushing boundaries. Subverting expectations.
That being said it would probably drive me crazy. I'm not sure how well I deal with subverted expectations these days, being old and whatnot.
I was watching a '40s B Western last week. A Durango Kid film starring Bill Elliott. A typical film. Hollywood made a zillion of these. The Bill Elliott films seem particularly violent. 20 -30 people getting gunned down per movie. . Elliott will always shoot a guy three or four times when it seems like one shot would probably do the job. When they're not shooting each other they're pummeling one another with their fists . I usually don't pay much attention to these things when I watch. I love looking at the carriages and the buggys. Some of the films are extremely well made and there's always a few good shots at least in every one of them. It's mindless junk food for your brain.
So I was watching this film and Bill Elliott meets another guy in a saloon and within 30 seconds they're in a gunfight. Bill out draws the other guy and shoots him. As he's falling Bill shoots him three more times. Just to make sure.
So I'm thinking" Christ is this ever violent!" Then I think" Well, That's Entertainment!" and you know it, it is!"
Depictions of violence are a leading form of entertainment. I've been thinking about that a lot. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that when we give everybody a bunch of guns they start shooting each other.
After the Bill Elliott movie I watched some Japanese samurai film. No subtitles. Everyone sat down to stately tea ceremonies after which they got up and hacked each other's limbs off. It was obviously a low budget programmer. Everyday entertainment in Japan.
Haven't seen it yet. I might get around to it now that Roy has weighed in. I do have a personal anecdote.
A friend told me, "Stop Making Sense" is getting a theatrical re-release, and there are worse ways to spend a Tuesday afternoon.
Popcorn and beverage in hand, we settled in to await Mr. Byrne and Co.
The "Anatomy of a Fall" trailer came up. Talk about a preemptive buzzkill.
If I was working in promotion, the copy would read: IF THIS FILM DOESN'T BRING YOU RIGHT DOWN, SEEK PSYCHIATRIC HELP IMMEDIATELY!
It was mostly the juxtaposition that got to us. I'm reminded of taking my mom to the movies in the 1980's. There would be ten minutes of teasers the next round of teenage slasher pictures before we could enjoy Shirley MacLaine's latest light comedy.
Don't get me wrong - I appreciate dark. Yesterday I watched "City Of Life And Death". Right up there with "Glengary Glen Ross" on the list of great films I never want to see again. In the 1970's the local PBS station corrupted me with DeSica and Kurosawa. Imagine being a school kid with his whole life ahead of him. Then get him to watch "Umberto D".
At least the marketing for "Anatomy Of A Fall" was honest. Going on the trailer to "Prick Up Your Ears" I bought tickets for what was supposed to be a witty comedic look at the swinging sixties. I went with my sister, brother-in-law, and our 13 year old cousin. Oops. Thank God we left mom behind for that one.
Had to stop reading this when I came to the spoiler alert. From what I read of this review and others, it sounds like a movie I want to see.
I think films like these are hard for American audiences because they don’t have good guys and bad guys and the filmmakers don’t tell the audience to think. I liked the movie and thought the acting was great, but when thinking about it as “best picture “ I am reminded of an episode of Hell’s Kitchen in which a contestant made fish and chips. Ramsey said that’s really great fish and chips, but you know, it’s just fish and chips and this is a show about fine dining. So I’ll say this about Anatomy of a Fall: it is a really good courtroom drama, but it’s a courtroom drama…
Sigh. I always feel left out this time of year. I never see any of the movies. I'm sure I'll get around to Oppenheimer, but I resisted because I know I'll be yelling at the screen. Like Titanic, which have not and have no intention to see, it's a matter of extreme knowledge of a very specific historical event. ( Titanic pissed off Neil deGrasse Tyson because they got the stars wrong - of course). I know they got the horizon effect wrong even without seeing it. I'll be yelling That's wrong, That's wrong That's wrong the whole time I watch Oppenheimer. I understand, way too deep in the weeds for norms, but I still reserve the right to do so.
Me, my feeds are blowing up over how hideous the new live-action Avatar (Airbender, not blue goobers) is. And it is. As if that dirty, no good, waste of perfectly good protoplasm M. Night Shalaman hadn't already desecrated it enough.
Oscars for the autistic. Now, there's a thought.
Wait, Putin didn’t do it?
Just thinking about the ambiguity here, "Did she or didn't she?" and how it seems the film leaves this unresolved, made me wonder about a related question: To what extent do we identify with (and root for) the protagonist of a film simply because they are the protagonist? Maybe truth or questions of guilt or innocence have nothing to do with it, maybe it's just a mechanical process: The film is shown from a certain character's point of view, we will tend to identify with that character, right or wrong.
This effect carried me through multiple seasons of Breaking Bad, rooting for Walt even as he became progressively more monstrous, and then just recently I felt a shock when watching Day of the Jackal, realizing that I always feel some disappointment at the end when the assassin's bullet doesn't find its home in de Gaulle's head. And it's not that I'm hostile to de Gaulle or a fan of political assassination, it's just the effect of seeing the Jackal's meticulous preparations, and wanting in some small part to see that carry through to success. Of course, I'm also seeing Inspector LaBelle's clever detective work and rooting for him to succeed, but who I'm rooting for at the moment doesn't have anything to do with right or wrong, or whether the character is a "good" person (the Jackal, for example, uses a woman for sex and then murders her in cold blood, what a monster he is) but simply whose eyes I'm looking through at that moment.
Another example, Anatomy of a Murder: Was Ben Gazarra's character really innocent? Do we really care? We come to identify so much with his attorney, played by Jimmy Stewart (and how can you NOT identify with Jimmy Stewart?) that it's not a question of guilt or innocence, it just becomes a matter of wanting to see "our" side win.
All of this has obvious political implications, our moral compasses can be easily deflected from True North by the magnetism of an attractive or interesting character, when we come to adopt that character's point of view as our own. We are a shifty and untrustworthy species.