December Movies Part 4: Anatomy of a Fall & American Fiction

Seeking some quality cinematic fare that's bound to get some awards love? Well then I highly recommend a tense courtroom drama/thriller that is partly in French, and a brilliant comedy about a Black writer who decides to write "a Black book". That's what we call range!

Anatomy of a Fall: Directed by Justine Triet (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur Harari), this movie won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival (Triet is only the third female director to win this award). It stars Sandra Huller as Sandra Voyter, a German author who lives in a remote house in France with her French husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis) and blind son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). The movie opens with Samuel's dead body outside on the snow, which Daniel discovers when he is returning from a walk. What then follows is an impeccable mystery and courtroom drama where we try to figure out the circumstances of this death and whether our heroine is a murderer.

This movie is simply brilliant. There's a crucial language component to it - a lot of this film is in English, because Sandra's French is not that good and she will speak English to her son or her lawyer, or eventually in court when the questioning is too complicated for her to have to deal with in French. It's fascinating to see how things sometimes get lost in translation - I'm sure there were numerous other examples, but I found it weirdly telling that at one point during questioning, Sandra replies (in English) that a particular passage in one of her books was 20 pages long, and the prosecuting lawyer says (in French), 27. It's not a material error, but still conveys how dangerous this woman's position is, going to trial in a country where she doesn't speak the language with ease and could easily have her words misinterpreted.

The real star though is Milo Machado Graner, who plays her young son, Daniel. He is precocious and wise, wears all his emotions on his face, and despite the extreme trauma of the events that are transpiring, does some significant detective work to help us reach a satisfying conclusion. It's an absolutely gripping movie, unfolding mostly in a courtroom, with increasingly tawdry revelations and red herrings. I was glued to the screen and I'm willing to bet you will be too.

American Fiction: What an incredible movie. Based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett and directed by Cord Jefferson (who also adapted the screenplay), this might be the funniest movie I watched this year. Funny with a great deal of satirical bite.

Jeffrey Wright plays Thelonius "Monk" Ellison, an English professor who is fed up with his woke white students and fed up with white publishers who won't publish his novels of literary fiction because they aren't "Black enough." As a joke, he sits down and writes a stereotypically Black novel, one full of slang and downtrodden characters, gun violence, clashes with the police and the other tropes that pop culture has taught us to expect from Black characters. He sends this to his agent, who is rightfully appalled, but Monk insists that the novel be sent out to various publishers under a pseudonym. The intention is for the publishers to realize it is a joke and that he is mocking them for their racist taste. But of course, turns out they love the book and want to buy it for substantial sums of money. 

What follows is insane and wonderful and thought-provoking. And utterly hysterical. Monk must now pretend to be the author of this godforsaken book, and the lie keeps building and building upon itself as the book continues to get more acclaim. Along the way, he is also dealing with some family drama, with folks like Sterling K. Brown and Tracee Ellis Ross playing his amazing siblings, as well as dealing with his anger towards another Black author that he deems to be a sellout, played by the wonderful Issa Rae. It's a wild ride, and the ending is particularly sublime. You absolutely MUST watch this film - it is incisive, funny, and moving, an absolutely heartwarming piece of magic that also has deeply cutting things to say about American society. Cord Jefferson miraculously balances the tone of this film with pitch perfect precision and Jeffrey Wright delivers the performance of his career - give them all the awards.