I really wish I had seen ANATOMY OF A FALL before there was any hype. Everyone at the New York Film Festival was looking forward to it and then raving about it. It was and is the best film in many people's eyes. I couldn't fit it into my schedule, its two and a half hour run time making screenings tough to get to around other festival films. Finally, at the end of January I finally sat down and saw it...
It's not bad but I wouldn't say it's remotely near the best films of the year.
The plot of the film concerns what happens when a man falls from a window and dies. The police think his wife killed him, she says it was either an accident or suicide, and their son is caught in the middle. She's kind of unlikable and we're given differing possibilities. Things boil in a pot for a while before get to the final fade out.
I wasn't much impressed. Don't get me it's not a bad film, but I am lost as to what I'm supposed to get out of it. Is it an intriguing thriller? Yes. Beyond that I don't have a clue. What is it that makes the film so highly touted? I don't know. Anything thematically is unremarkable, if its there at all.
Somewhere about the midway point I stopped looking for the big "ah ha" moment.
To be perfectly honest if the film wasn't up for Oscars I would have bailed, thinking my fellow writers were just feeling pretentious on the day they saw the film or maybe they were thinking their broken relationships weren't this bad, but somehow the Academy bought the BS so I decided to stay and see if there was anything there. I didn't see it.
Don't get me wrong I don't hate the film, but lord knows there are better ones out there.
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