Courtroom dramas are having a moment in prestige French cinema. After last year’s brutal, fixed-gaze Saint Omer that was chosen as France’s submission to the Oscar race for Best International Feature Film, two French courtroom dramas have earned stellar reviews at this year’s Cannes, and they share a peculiar connection: Arthur Harari is the co-writer of Anatomy of a Fall in Competition and one of the lead actors in The Goldman Case in the Director’s Fortnight. (Harari himself directed Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle to great reviews in the Un Certain Regard section two years ago.)
That may explain the similarities between the two films’ approaches and the even more illuminating differences. Anatomy of a Fall concerns a German novelist living in a remote, snowy France chalet, who, after her husband’s unlikely, deadly fall from the third floor, naturally becomes the prime suspect of the case. The trial brings out unflattering details in the marriage that cast doubt on her innocence and strain the relationship between her and her visually impaired, 11-year-old son.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of Anatomy of a Fall is that, despite the high degree of contemporariness sometimes to the extent of low-quality iPhone or consumer-video cinematography, the film has nothing to do with en vogue issues like identity politics. Even the minimalist Saint Omer is all about the misogynoir faced by a Black mother who killed her child, but Anatomy of a Fall straight-up just goes for a black-and-white morality play. It is a character study of guilt, judgment, relationships, fairness and the legal process. It’s about argumentation, discourse, words. That kind of classicism is arguably sorely missed in today’s cinema, as adult-oriented films find it increasingly difficult to stand out in today’s media distribution and social climate without topical hooks. Not that there is anything wrong with tackling intersectional social issues (as it is often necessary), it is nice to see something go back to the roots of human nature without the shallow issue-based window dressing endemic in today’s Hollywood productions.
Similar to its approach to topicality, Anatomy of a Fall is unadorned in construct, merely relying on pages and pages of dialogue that often switches between English and French. Dense like a novel, it has no late plot twist or sensationalism, trusting its fate entirely one fictional testimony after another. This highly French and patient approach to filmmaking cannot be farther from Hollywood, which would surely spice it up with didactic drama and little faith in the audience’s attention. But as Anatomy of a Fall simply lets the legal drama unfold, the morally gray details that come to life exponentially enrich the film and entrust the judgment of the characters to the viewer. It also remembers to include small tidbits and asides, often humorous, that sketch the characters and situation human.
Sandra Hüller delivers a reliable performance, entirely in her second and third languages, that subtly and thus truthfully reflects the increasing moral ambiguity of her character. Like last year’s Return to Seoul, Anatomy of a Fall automatically gains a thick layer of thematic complexity just by switching languages and capturing all the lost implications and messiness in translation. With a murky, ugly look that seeks not to aestheticize but to bring authenticity, director Justine Triet has delivered a laser-focused film much stronger than her previous Sibyl, a glossier yet far messier melodrama split into too many story arcs.
The Goldman Case, on the other hand, takes place in 1976. Pierre Goldman is a leftist activist who has admitted to multiple charges of robbery and illegal weapons ownership, but maintains his innocence in two charges of murder. In a retrial, his explosive, disruptive personality threatens to ruin the highly logical defense prepared by his lawyer Kiejman, who shares a similar Polish Jew background with Goldman.
Ironically, though set decades earlier, The Goldman Case is the film that entertains far more social issues. Soundbites like calling entire police forces racist and fascist might actually have far more contemporary relevance and widespread agreement today than in the 1970s. While The Goldman Case keeps in line with French cinema’s subtlety and never makes the corruption of the police force its entire point, its frequent flirtations with that rhetoric and sympathetic depiction of the far-left explain the case for the adaptation today. It’s surely a far more honest leftist legal drama than something snakily bad-faith like Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 from Hollywood.
The Goldman Case takes Anatomy of a Fall’s screenplay structure to an even further extreme by placing the entire film, except for the opening scene, in the courtroom. The trial lasts almost two whole hours in The Goldman Case. There are even more contradictory witness testimonies and snide lawyer remarks, yet director Cédric Kahn does a magnificent job subtly retaining the important information for the audience and placing the rest on lower priority. The script is slightly more manipulative than that of Anatomy of a Fall, but that is perhaps necessary given the circumstances of the case. Never for one second does it feel like we need to step out of the courtroom to see a reenactment of the crime scene (the lawyers never even bring in diagrams or models).
The Goldman Case is even more stylistically pointed than Anatomy of a Fall and with good reason. Shot in a boxy Academy ratio and on tight lenses that compress the z-axis depth of space, The Goldman Case embeds the confinement and rising heat of the courtroom in the audiovisual fabric of the film. Its lack of a conventional coverage plan leads to moments of spatial confusion, but the rewards are often worth the damage as Kahn finds many layered compositions that reflect the relationships and tensions between the multiple players in the room.
Harari delivers such a rich performance as the lawyer who has to keep his cool in front of his volatile client that it’s hard to believe his main interests in the industry are as director and screenwriter. While The Goldman Case gives the audience slightly more guidance in following the case (which, I suspect, involved simplifying or omitting details of the case), both films excel in relying on thick-as-textbook screenplays for riveting results.