Can authors or filmmakers be judged for the thoughts or actions of the characters that they create? In recent days, this question has been asked over and over again in movie discussion forums in India, following the release of Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s film Animal, a mindless celebration of toxic masculinity and misogyny. The director’s public pronouncements and the heroic way in which he portrays problematic characters makes it somewhat easy for people to arrive at an answer.
Although it can be quite a crime to mention Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall in the same article as that film, it has to be done, for Triet’s film has an interesting passage where it is not so easy to answer that question. The film played to a packed house in the World Cinema category at the 28th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on Saturday.
Writer Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller), the protagonist, is facing trial after the death of her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) following a fall from the top of their house up in the snowy mountains. At a crucial point in the trial, the prosecutor pores over her books and finds some similarity between the thoughts of a character planning to kill someone and the way her husband was killed.
