THIS MOVIE deserved to win, NOT Oppenheimer.

- [Lawyer] So as you know, the autopsy report is inconclusive about the cause of death. - Stop. I did not kill him. - [Sven] I have to say for me, this is the best movie of the season. - That's not the point. - [Sven] It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and was nominated for five Oscars. Only, yes, only winning one for best screenplay. It should have been a lot more. (director speaking in foreign language) - [Sven] The director calls it the crime drama, but I would classify it as a suspense that pre

tends to be a whodunit. - [Laurent] What is great is that it's not very intellectual and clever things for smart people. We can feel it really organically. - I'm not that monster, you know? - [Sven] Throughout the film, you think you're looking for the answer. Did she kill her husband? But in reality, there's something much bigger going on. - [Samuel] I can't stand anymore of your fucking eyes! (glass crackles) - So in this video, I will take a closer look at the two scenes to find out why this

film works so well in grabbing the audience. So another story turn right here. Sitting in a theater, there is no other film this year where I paid more attention to every word, every shot, and every sound. - You're the one to blame! - Are you ready? Let's go. "Anatomy Of A Fall", what a great film. It kind of came by surprise. There was a lot of buzz about it once it came from Cannes Film Festival, it won the Palm d'Or. I walked into the theater not knowing anything about this film and I was ver

y surprised, just really riveted by this film. I'm excited to look at some scenes. - I have nothing to do with it! - The first scene that I wanna look at is the scene where her lawyer is going to investigate the crime scene. I'll mark the screen. So the scene in total is 3:11. The reason why I wanna take a look at the scene is because the editor described that this is probably the closest scene to a Hitchcock movie. So here we go. - Where do you want to start? Should I explain something? - Yeah,

yeah, maybe. - Yeah, this is where. Come on, this is where we eat. - Just a little context. This guy over here, that's her lawyer, this is the first day on the case. They're good friends and he's trying to figure out what happened and how he could build the defense for his client. So he is on her side, that's number one. But he comes across as a little like, skeptical, or he's playing devil's advocate. There's an interchange earlier, like he was asking a bunch of questions to her. She said. - S

top. I did not kill him. - And there's this great moment where he says. - That's not the point, really. - We have to sell the jury that you didn't kill him, and right now it's not looking very good. It's fairly slow moving. I mean, this is what I love about suspense. You get a lot of visual information, and then the audience in their mind is trying to make a case where they're connecting the dots and I think this is what's happening here. Like, as soon as he goes outside, very little dialogue, a

nd this is what Hitchcock would call pure cinema. That means he only really considers shots and sounds. He doesn't really pay a lot of attention to the words so he doesn't think that filmmaking and storytelling should rely on dialogue. For him, dialogue is just another sound. He's over exaggerating this because if you look at any Hitchcock movie, you notice that the dialogue is actually quite to the point, quite witty, and it does tell the story. - Sometimes we deliberately step into those traps

. - I was born in mine, I don't mind it anymore. - But that's sort of what he portrays as pure cinema is to just really rely on the visuals and the sounds. So this first shot here, he's alone, we cut to what he's seeing. He sees this window, and this is obviously where the husband fell from and he's trying to figure out how realistic is this that this was an accident. Did she really actually kill him, or did somebody else kill him? That's kind of the whodunit part of this film is really trying t

o solve this mystery of what happened. Right here you see the edge of a shed, and this is actually where the husband's head got hit and then he fell somewhere over here, and then he slid a couple of feet over there. You saw blood here, you saw some blood on the wall of the shed, and then you saw sort of the sliding of the the body. He only sort of read the report and he kind of knows what happened, but he wants to make a picture for himself. - He was working over there? - Yes, he was insulating

the attic. - Notice the shot, the movement. That's a dolly. - Yes. - It's another dolly shot. Why I wanted you to pay attention to these two dolly shots is because I remember that the director was talking about that the film has a very classical feel. The cameras tend to be on sticks or dollies. The movement is very smooth and then as the film progresses, we're more moving towards handheld camera and more frantic stuff. We'll see later if that's really true with the later scenes, but right now i

t feels all very like, well planned out shot listed. To set up a dolly shot like this usually takes a couple of hours so you really wanna make sure that that shot will be used and has a real purpose. It's a little bit of progression in time here which I like. So we're not seeing him kind of emerging from behind here the stairs and going in there. We're compressing time by having him already be sort of in the center of this attic. And that's really nice. With editing, you really shape how long yo

u spend going places sort of the process, what we call the shoe leather, but it's a continuation. Like, we're kind of cutting on the action. I just feel pure cinema right here. This is typical Hitchcock storytelling. We're not disrupting the audience engagement through words. We're just letting the audience take in this crime scene, figuring out for themselves what this might mean. If this was an accident, it required a lot of effort to make that happen. He really had to get out of the way of th

is window. He has to like, lower his head around this rafter there as he opens the window. So it'd be very hard for somebody accidentally to fall out of this window, unless this window was already open. Could this be really an accident? It seems very unlikely to me as the audience watching this right now and putting it together. This is the little shed we see from above, and I remember in the theater it didn't make sense to me at the time like, what the shape was because they haven't really talk

ed about this yet. It didn't read as another building to me. - [Laurent] The scene where the lawyer going upstairs, there we have that strange woman, blonde woman at the back. We knew that we were like, doing some Hitchcockian thing, you know? - The editor talked about that this particular shot is really sort of is an homage to Hitchcock, the woman way in the background just watching this. Not quite sure which specific movie this references. If you know, let me know in the comments. I'd be reall

y curious. - [Lawyer] The window, do you remember when the ambulance arrived was it open? - Yes, it was. - It's interesting that now she's coming over. So this is a little bit of a decision on her part and it moves the story along. And the story turn is really that he went from taking in the information to now becoming investigator and trying to get additional information through her. - [Lawyer] The window, do you remember when the ambulance arrived was it open? - Okay, this is interesting that

he asked about the window being open because he kind of has the same thought that I had. It would be very hard accidentally to fall through that window if the window wasn't open already. He's building the case. - [Lawyer] Took some risk when he was working. - We're staying in this wide shot for this interchange. - Meticulous. He works slowly. - Which makes sense. I think it's very respectful and it feels right to not like go into coverage, medium closeups, closeups of this. It feels more like we

are subjectively just taking in the data. - He shut himself off from the rest of the world so he never called for me or Daniel up here. - [Lawyer] Anyway, with the height of the lower bar. - [Sandra] Window sill. - Window sill. - Yeah. - The height of the window sill, but he doesn't fully express his thought, which is like this window sill is lower than what like here in America for example, what the code is for railing that it has to be where your center of gravity is below the railing so that

it's very hard for you to tip over. If the center of gravity of your body is higher than what the railing is, it's easier for you to fall over. This clearly you can see in the shot when you look where his hip is and where the window sill is, it's very easy to fall over. But again, he hasn't fully verbalized that to us. It's just something that we just subconsciously take that in. - [Lawyer] Anyway, with the the height of the lower bar. - [Sandra] Window sill. - Window sill. - Yeah. - So he's th

inking about it. - Had he been drinking? - But he doesn't say what he's thinking about. So I think this makes sense to have this shot in this moment to really establish relationships of what he's saying and that we ourselves can figure out what he means. If he would've just said the whole thing in this shot, we would have no idea why he's talking about the windowsill that he's referring to the height of it and the center of gravity. There's one more thing I want to just figure out because I reme

mber before the husband was found dead, there was a shot of him looking through the window. So I wanna find that shot because she had this like, she had this interview here with this woman and the husband was upstairs working, and he started turning on the music to disrupt that. I guess he was kind of jealous that a journalist would interview his wife. They have this sort of rivalry. They're both writers and she had a successful book, and he hasn't had one in a while. He turns on the music and t

hat sort of initiates them stopping the interview. So they get outside. - [Sandra] Okay, bye. - Bye. - See you soon. - Yeah, definitely. - Yeah. (upbeat music) - This is the boy. He's gonna become like the key witness in this whole thing. He's taking his dog for a walk and this boy is blind. So the dog is sort of his eyes. Okay, so then we see that's her waving her goodbye, and we see the window up here and I think that's the last, the only time we see this window. This is the crime scene. I'm n

ot gonna really go into this, but there is the shot here and the window is open. I mean, it does look like he's been working right here. All his power tools are here. So we don't really know at this point what really happened. There's no way of us to remember whether the window was open or closed at the beginning because the audience never really tracks back in these cases. So the information that was given to us upfront, unless it was really set up well, we wouldn't have that information whethe

r the window was open or not. I remember actually when I watched the movie and I saw her that I wasn't a hundred percent sure who it was. Was it her or was it the husband? - The frustration is there. - The biggest scene in the film, and arguably the moment that turned lead actress Sandra Huller into an Oscar nominated star, is the fight. - You don't give a shit if it hurts me and Daniel. - You leave Daniel out of the game here. This is not about Daniel. - Yes, I will show it here in a moment, bu

t I have to mention that I did a full analysis of another scene. The third act surprise in the film where her blind son reveals an unexpected turn in the story. (Daniel speaks foreign language) Now it's the ultimate spoiler, so I decided not to show it here on YouTube. Instead, you can click the link in the show notes and watch it for free on my learning portal where, by the way, you will continue to get additional bonus scenes as I look at other films in the future. Now back to the biggest scen

e in the film, the fight. - [Sandra] Yourself as you say. You choose to sit on the sidelines because you're afraid and you're the one to blame! We're getting to the big scene and a lot of people have been talking about this fight. This fight is a class in its own. It's probably the reason why this film got so much attention, and it has to do with the intensity that we're feeling. and it starts off pretty subtle with a recording that everybody is listening to. The husband got into the habit of re

cording certain conversations. Something really magical happens at the right moment so I'm gonna change the color with orange. The whole scene in its length is 12 and a half minutes. 12:27. Here we go. Start off with wide shots. (judge speaks foreign language) (assistant speaks foreign language) - It's interesting the camera just now. So this is obviously improvised something, a readjustment, and they just left it in, which helps with the disruption of the moment. The audience is confused. So we

're now in handheld mode. There was a prior scene before this in the office of the judge. (judge speaks foreign language) - She called the boy in with his representative. He has like a social worker sort of watching out for him and making sure that he's safe because he's still sort of living with the mother, and we don't know if the mother is the murderer and if he's the key witness, whether she's gonna do something crazy. (judge speaks foreign language) (Daniel speaks foreign language) - She ad

vised that he should not be part of this because it's gonna get very, very nasty, very ugly, and he made a case that he still wants to be part of this and that not knowing would be just as damaging to him. That's just the setup to just raise the stakes. The boy arrives, the mother is surprised, she sees him. Transcript of the fight. - We can't afford it. I need time, not just a few hours. I'm talking about blocking out time for myself for the whole year. - Now we're in the moment. - Well, organi

ze your time differently if you want to. It's up to you. - So now we're visualizing what the recording is. Obviously, there was no camera there during the fight. He didn't record it with a camera so this is kind of just a interpretation. The question is whose point of view is this? - It's always just this time. Whether you have a book out. - She's closer than he is. - [Samuel] I've been following your lead for years! - Okay, raising the stakes. - I can't do anything with my time! Do you understa

nd? - Close on him. - It's not my time, it's yours. - Okay, so this was like kind of a conversation regular like, trying to solve problems in a marriage with daily chores, and now it becomes personal. He really raises his voice right here. - [Samuel] I mean, I've been following your lead for years. I can't do anything with my time! - She's calm. - Do you understand? - He's obviously not calm and the moment he raises his voice is the first time we're going to a medium closeup. Look at her body po

sture. - Do I force you to teach? If you want to make more time for yourself, I've never stopped you. - Are you fucking serious? I have to finish the renovation, plus I'm dealing with everything else. - So it's interesting that this shot here is her not leaning back because there she was leaning back. She could have sort of adjusted her body posture. It could be a different take, we don't know. In the moment, you will never notice this. - Why can't you just admit that it has to do with how thing

s are divided between us? - Because you are wrong. Come on, let's not start taking inventory here please. - Okay, so this is like phase one of this fight. We had like, this little setup, then he raised his voice. Now she's getting up, we're going to the next phase, which is kinda going on the down. He's upset, she's trying to calm him down. She comes towards him, she wants to diffuse and the energy would go down, which is good for like, you wanna have a dynamic shift, right? You don't just wanna

have it all go up all the time. You wanna go a little down before you go up on a bigger rise of tension. She pours him. - When you decided to homeschool Daniel, I told you be careful. - So this insert really helps with the diffusion. It emphasizes that it's about like her coming over to him, pouring wine, and then she's trying to really talk him off a ledge. - It's a beautiful and generous choice and I thank you for it, but you don't have to do it and I told you it would force you to- - What? F

orce me to spend more time with my son? I'm glad I did. I wouldn't have the relationship I have with him today if I didn't. - Yeah, the relationship that I don't have with him is what you mean to say. - No, I didn't say that. - No? - No. - So now she moves away again because he's not having any of this. He's actually using this to get back at her. So she arrives back at her table, so it's kind of the same position we're like, going back to square one, - [Samuel] Take a look at that. Why is this

so hard to discuss? - First of all, I don't believe in the notion of reciprocity in a couple. It's naive, and frankly, it's depressing. - Her body posture is different now. She's not leaning back. Now she is engaging, she's leaning forward and she's refuting his arguments, his line of argument. She's fighting back. So she is in the attack and he's turning away, which is his defense. - Stop whining about your scheduling bullshit and drop this logic which comes down to casting blame on me for what

you did or didn't do. - I live with you, I plan my life around you. - Okay, so there's a shift in who's raising the voice here. He's calm now, she is a little bit more excited or tense. - If I imposed on you what you're imposing on me, neither of us would be able to write. - Okay, so he's fighting back now. - I want this time back, and you owe it to me. Be fair. - I'm sorry, but no. Are you insane? I don't owe you anything, really. - When I was watching this the first time, I'm like, oh, she co

mpletely has him. Like, he has no game in this fight. His arguments, she always has a better retort, a better comeback, and this particular moment is now where we elevate it to the next level. It's gonna get pretty serious, and this fight is sort of used as the motivation. why she would kill him. And notice what the camera's doing now. Well, we had camera pans, but we had no movement of the camera towards the character. I sense that the camera is moving in. - No, are you insane? I don't owe you

anything, really. - Right here. - This is about your relationship with your son, to protect yourself and your comfort because you got scared and you put yourself in that position. - Okay, so this was basically moving into a closeup, this medium closeup, into a closeup. This is a bigger moment, a bigger story turn. - I want time to start writing again. - [Sandra] Great, go for it. If you want my advice, go back to the one you ditched. - That's your advice? Go back to the book that you plundered?

- So another story turn right here. She advises him to go with the book that he abandoned and we're learning new information about this book that he abandoned. - We've discussed it, you've given up. - You took the book's best idea. How am I supposed to just go back to it? - It's kind of a straw man argument right here. They went into what this is really about is that he really suffers from this rivalry that she is successfully writing books now that they're in this relationship, and he's struggl

ing to come up. He has writer's block. But the new thing we're learning is that she took an idea that he had and abandoned, and she used it in a book and successfully applied it and he's struggling with that. - The people that you grew up with, they look down on me whenever I don't make the effort to smile at them. - You never smile at anyone. - Yeah, that's why you love me, right? - Okay, now it gets like, really absurdly personal. Like, you never smile at anyone. That's just a jab. - That's wh

y you love me, right? - The camera kind of gets out of control here. - Because if you wanted to have some stupid bitch who grins at your friends at- - Like, what's happening? - You'd pick someone else. - This is like "NYPD Blue" style camera work. It's probably designed that way, was meant to be that way. We're now kind of really following this fight as if it's really happening documentary style, reality show style. By the way, they shot this whole film in Alexa. The reason being it's more contr

asty than a Red. So the camera is moving here and then immediately we go into a wider shot with a dolly. So there's another change, another turn. - You impose your way of living, speaking, eating, even fucking. - We're now changing the strategy again of how this is covered. Now we're in over the shoulders. Over the shoulders usually mean more about the relationship than the single character. - I could never get you to fuck any other way because you just expect me to follow your lead. That's your

notion of what a couple is. - I don't believe that. I don't have a notion, I don't give a fuck about couples really. - The blocking is a little chaotic again because he's blocking her. In traditional filmmaking that wouldn't happen, but here it's loose and it's a little bit chaotic, and it works. There's no reason to cut away from this when he covers her face or when he steps out of the frame. It has that sort of raw reality show feel to it. Out of frame, now it's about her. - I don't believe t

hat. I don't have a notion, I don't give a fuck about couples, really. - In the frame. Blocks her for a second, blocks her. Some directors would interrupt this or would say this is no good. Don't use this in the editing. I think this is great. - Everything. Everything, plus I have to accept that you fuck other people. - I do not fuck other people. - [Samuel] Don't deny it. - He's very black and white. There's no nuance in his thinking. - I'm a man who's been cheated on, plundered and cheated on.

- Zoom in. When they're shot with the Alexa, they also preferred zoom lenses over primes. The reason again, being, having that freedom to function. Also, when you use a zoom lens, it becomes less glossy, less cinematic. It becomes more real and raw. It's a subtle thing. - Which are solutions for you only. You don't give a shit if it hurts me and Daniel, - You leave Daniel out of the game here. This is not about Daniel. - So now he brings the boy in and she doesn't like that, and that's importan

t because now this triggers a whole different element for her. - You're not sacrificing yourself, as you say. You choose to sit on the sidelines because you're afraid! Because your pride makes your head explode before you can even come up with a little gem of an idea! And now you wake up and you're 40 and you need someone to blame, and you're the one to blame! - Okay, wow. Like, my hair is standing up. This shot is the longest shot in the whole thing. How long is it? 42 seconds. It's all on her,

and she goes from don't go there, don't bring the boy in. She has this whole monologue where she goes from 80 to 120%. There's nothing else that he can do at this point to diffuse this fight. It's on, and either he backs away, he runs away, or this is gonna turn really, really ugly and it ends on his closeup because he's facing the truth. He now has to confront it. He has all these walls, all these excuses, all these things that he made up for why he's not writing, and all this has been demolis

hed because he challenged her. Everything that he threw at her triggered her even more, and the last straw was really bringing in the boy. This is the moment where the relationship breaks. I remember when I watched this film, this is the moment when I felt like, wow, this actress. - [Announcer] The amazing Sandra Huller is nominated for her role in "Anatomy Of A Fall." - You're smart. I know you know I'm right, and Daniel has nothing to do with it! (glass crackling) - You're violent! - Yes, I am

violent! (people panting) (objects clattering) - You don't quite know who hit who, what the injuries were. The one thing that I completely didn't remember, but now that I'm watching it again, is this line of. - [Samuel] You're a monster. - Which really ties back to the ending of the film. I'm not gonna spoil it here, but it actually is a nice setup for how this film ends. When she completely exposes him to his lies and his pretense to back in the courtroom, and what's beautiful about this, the

voices are obviously very present, very clear. If this was a recording from like his phone, his iPhone that's in his pocket, it would not sound like this. It would be way more roomy. So there's this artistic license of it, but it's necessary because we need to feel the energy. - [Sandra] What do you expect me to do? I mean, it's part of the job. You have to organize yourself differently. - But still, you don't think about it when you're experiencing this, but this would never have happened that

way. And then they go to the wide shot, which is obviously very dramatic to have the fight kind of happen in the wide shot. - You're violent! - Yes, I am violent! - On her. She seems detached. (objects clattering) Like, there's nothing going on with her, which is like, so Kuleshov. It's a neutral face, which in editing is a great thing to use a neutral face because the audience will project the emotion into a character more easily if it's a neutral expression. (couple panting) (objects clatterin

g) Whatever you feel she feels, you think she feels. (couple panting) It's a little bit more going on with him than with her. (couple panting) When they shot this, they probably did lots of takes, lots of variations on this. I pointed out some of the the coverage choices when there was a zoom, when there was a dolly move in, from a closeup, from a medium closeup to a closeup. Just rewatching it right now, I mean, I had my hair standing up because it's a very exhausting scene for the actors, for

everybody involved. Feel free to suggest another film that I should take a look at, and even more important, what scene. I'm compiling a list of films that I wanna do. (judge speaks foreign language) - Happy editing. Cheers. (upbeat music)