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Anatomy of A Fall (or Anatomie d’une chute) is a 2023 French court-drama and mystery film directed and co-written by Justine Triet. The film follows Sandra Voyter, a German university lecturer and novelist who lives in rural France with her husband Sammuel, their Son Daniel– who is blind– and his guide dog Snoop. When Daniel and Snoop find Samuel dead and on the ground and bleeding, Daniel becomes the only witness that can help determine if Sandra had killed Sammuel or if Sammuel had taken his own life. The film navigates us through Sandra’s court case, unraveling the mystery behind Samuel’s death.

The film, while itself is most certainly fictional, the understanding of fact and fiction is a central part of the story. The film makes the case of Samuel’s fall as ambiguous to the audience as it is to the characters. A central argument in the film is if one can truly know something if they did not see it. This parallels to Daniel’s visual impairment, which is a essential aspect of the narrative.

At 1:26:00 in the film, when Sandra is questioned, she explains what it is like to live with a child that has disabilities. She states, “I never saw Daniel as handicapped. I wanted to protect him from that perception. As soon as you pigeonhole a child that way, you condemn him to not imagining his life as his own; whereas in fact he should feel it’s the best life because it’s his own. He reads books, goes on social media like any other kid, he dreams, he plays, he cries, he laughs… He’s a lively kid.”

Though the purpose of this monologue was for Sandra to explain her reasons for holding resentment for her husband amidst the trial– it does call into light how children with disabilities are seen by others. Sandra clearly does not believe in this as her statement humanizes her son as a child who does things that other children do. She says that she “very quickly refused to see it that way” in reference to the doctor calling the accident that had blinded Daniel, a “tragic” situation.

Sandra finally ends her statement saying that she maybe “resented Samuel for projecting his own pain onto Daniel.” This statement may have casted doubt on her innocence of the death of her husband among the prosecutors. However, outside of the context of the court case, it is an example of how families handle disabilities and the frustrations one might have when interacting with someone who looks down onto the disability.

This entire monologue points to how Samuel, the prosecutors, and the audience should not see Daniel’s blindness as a prop or a focal point. In the film, Daniel is seen doing many of the activities that Sandra had mentioned in her speech. Her speech instead re-focuses the narrative that there is a situation that is greater at large than Daniel’s inability to see. When Sandra is referring to Samuel, it is that Daniel is independent and should be independent without people telling him what his life should be. When the speech is directed to the audience, it makes them look past the disability and instead reminds them that he is a child that has lost his father and potentially his mother too.

The film eventually demonstrate a shift surrounding Daniel’s independence at 2:01:36 when the court allows Daniel to testify. Daniel makes the decision himself to not stay with his mother the night before the trial and only with his caregiver. He then goes behind his caregiver’s back to feed his dog aspirin to recreate the time when his dog was sick from eating his father’s vomit after overdosing on aspirin. This leads Daniel to finally give his testimony of newly remembered information which exonerates his mother as seen at 2:18:07 in the film.

This final act of the film is intended to give a conclusion to the trial. As for Daniel, we see less of his disability. Though the beginning of the film there is Braille on the walls for Daniel to navigate around the house, we do not see him do this in this act. Snoop, his guide dog, is incapacitate from Daniel feeding the aspirin, which Daniel can feel the dog’s heartbeat, hold Snoop and cry in the same manner that someone without blindness would. These details are intended so that we see less of Daniel’s disability and more of Daniel himself. We see that he is capable of remembering his father’s overdose that is a highly contested testimony of his mothers in court. This results in him devising an experiment to recreate its conditions to prove his mother’s claims as correct. We see Daniel without his aids of braille, his dog, and his parents demonstrating that he is able to live without such aids as a normal person.

This in turn helps the court and the audience see his testimony as his own. The audience can understand that Daniel is capable of remembering a speech his father gave him in the car about death. This is a stark contrast from the conditions set in the beginning that Daniel is the sole witness yet could not possibly see anything due to his blindness which makes his accounts incomplete. Now the audience of Daniel’s speech sees him as capable of witnessing a tragedy and can emphasize with the tragic nature of losing a parent rather than taking pity on his disability.