Anatomy of a Fall is all about one major question — did Sandra kill her husband?
Justine Triet's Oscar-winner movie opened the door to a fascinating debate about the innocence or guilt of Sandra Hüller's character, who endures an exhaustingly long trial where her marriage and her entire personality are put under the spotlight.
There are other mysteries in the movie — did Sandra's son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) invent that conversation with his dad to help his mother's case? — and yet the central question remains: is Sandra guilty of murder?
We delve into the ending of Anatomy of a Fall and the answer to that question, which Triet and Hüller have addressed while many viewers ran rampant with their own theories.
If you still haven't seen one of the best movies of 2023, you might want to stop reading.
Major spoilers ahead.
Anatomy of a Fall ending explained: Is Sandra guilty?
First, let's recap — German writer Sandra Voyter is accused of murdering her husband Samuel Maleski (played by Samuel Theis), who was found dead in the family's isolated house in France after falling from the window of his top-floor studio.
Their 11-year-old son Daniel, who is visually impaired, found the body when returning home from walking their dog Snoop (played by scene-stealer Messi), which means there was nobody at the house besides the couple when the fall took place and no witnesses to attest to Sandra's innocence or culpability.
Did Samuel fall? Did he die by suicide? Did Sandra push him?
During the movie, we get a deep dive into the case — we hear the few testimonies, the existing evidence and the lawyers' speculation about who is to blame for this tragedy. Sandra's sexual orientation and professional ambition are used against her, as well as an explosive argument between the couple (recorded by Samuel) which is played at the courthouse.
Lacking hard evidence, Daniel's testimony tips the scales in his mother's favour.
He recalls he did an experiment after learning his father had allegedly attempted suicide, linking the incident to Snoop falling ill. Daniel gave Samuel's drugs to the dog and the reaction was exactly the same, leading him to believe the animal ate his father's vomit, proving the suicide attempt did take place.
At trial, he also shares a conversation that happened in the car on their way to the vet. Apparently, Samuel told him Snoop would not always be around despite how much he loves him, which Daniel interprets as a sort of goodbye. He believes his father wanted to take his own life, and, despite his doubts. he believes his mother is innocent.
Sandra is absolved and Anatomy of a Fall ends, and yet the main question still doesn't seem to have a clear answer.
Not even actress Sandra Hüller knows for sure, although that wasn't an obstacle for her Oscar-nominated performance. "I think I wanted to create somebody who would be capable of doing it, I wanted certain people to be a little bit afraid of her," she told Variety.
"Because why do we always have to be sweet, and good victims and all these things? I had a little fun in leaving it in [the] dark."
Hüller never made up her mind about her character's innocence. "Sometimes I wake up at night and think, Oh, I missed something. Maybe she did it. But I don't know," she said.
Director Justine Triet knows if Sandra killed her husband or not, but she is not going to reveal that information anytime soon. "I will tell you in 10 years," she jokingly said to one journalist after her victory at the Golden Globes (via EW).
During the press conference, Triet said only she and her co-writer and partner Arthur Harari know the truth.
"It was really important to not speak about this on set and with the actors because it's not the point of the movie and it's ambiguous," said Triet, who noted that while "maybe she didn't kill him", she could have driven Samuel to suicide.
"There's a lot of possibilities. It's not so black and white," she added.
In an interview for CBC, Triet elaborated further on her reasons for not revealing all the details of the story.
"It was very important to me that truth cannot emerge in the courtroom. It won't and it doesn't. I was interested in this couple exactly for the fact that they are the face of something that goes beyond a kind of Manichean good and evil: there's a bad guy and a good guy, and a victim and not," she explained.
The French filmmaker pointed out that there are many grey areas to what could have happened between Sandra and Samuel.
"I think the most interesting thing that I have been told about this film is that she can be responsible without being guilty, or she could be guilty without being responsible," she explained.
"She could be responsible for having driven him to suicide without being guilty of having killed him, or she could have killed him without having wanted to — whether in an impulsive way or in however we can try to imagine that. So truth exists, but it's too complex to be grasped here."
Without an official answer, all viewers have left to do is speculate. And that they do.
Thanks to Hüller's layered, fascinating performance, many think her character did it. The couple's constant arguments, mainly focused on him resenting her literary success (accusing her of stealing his big ideas) and her blaming him for the accident which resulted in Daniel's blindness seemed heated enough to escalate into violence.
However, probably the strongest theory is that Samuel killed himself, whether it was to frame his wife (to take revenge against her) or because he was deeply depressed and unhappy with his life.
Some viewers have pointed at the recording of one of the couple's arguments (which he clearly pushed for, seeking to draw blood) as a sign that he was trying to frame her. But perhaps he was just trying to find inspiration in their own miseries, and ultimately it was too much to bear.
He could also have fallen from the window, although what an anticlimactic explanation that would be. Bad timing, too, as it happened when Daniel wasn't in the house.
Talking about Daniel — there seems to be consensus on the fact that he made up the car conversation with his dad. But why?
In an earlier scene, Daniel's carer Marge gives him a bit of interesting advice, seeing the kid is unable to decide who to put his faith in. She tells him that when you are uncertain of something, you just have to decide what is true for you. After that, he comes up with the story that ends up absolving his mother.
Believing in his father's suicide attempt, he threw a bone to his mother by making up a conversation that would save her. Not because he thought she was actually guilty and needed saving, but because the evidence, even if small, was piling up against her. Still, it's just a theory.
What really happened isn't really the point, though.
Anatomy of a Fall is about how hard it is most of the time to grasp the truth when life (and the legal system too) is made of stories and perspectives that are put together in order to make sense of the things that happen to us. Ultimately, like Marge said, we decide what we want to believe.
Anatomy of a Fall is available to buy or rent from Prime Video, iTunes, Microsoft Store and more in the UK, while it is available to stream on Hulu in the US. It's also available to buy or rent in the US from Prime Video, iTunes, Vudu and more.
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Deputy Movies Editor, Digital Spy
Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over seven years, mostly for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas.
Her work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema in the UK.
She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world, and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London.
Now based in the UK, Mireia joined Digital Spy in June 2023 as Deputy Movies Editor.
