The medium of film literally
consists of “talking” pictures in succession; that is to say, sound and image. Amidst
astounding technological improvements, audiences in the twenty-first century
could not be blamed for losing sight of what the medium actually is. It is easy
to get lost in the “bells and whistles” and miss the power simply in relating
sound and visual images. It is perhaps less forgivable when directors allow
themselves to get lost in the rarified computerized air at the expense of
realizing the potential in relating sound and image. A strong narrative is of
course also essential, and it is easy to find examples in which an orientation
to creating visually astonishing eye-candy comes at the expense of creating a
deeply engaging narrative. Nevertheless, here I want to focus on the power that
lies in relating sound and image, both of which “move” in a motion picture
(after the silent era, of course). In the film, Anatomy of a Fall (2023),
the theory that sound should extenuate image to form a more wholistic unity in
service to narrative meets with a counter-example. At one point in the film,
the loss of an accompanied visual that goes with the sound (to be replaced by
another visual) renders the continuing sound more powerful in triggering
raw emotions. The point being made by the film at that point regards the
viability of close-contact, long-term human relationships, given our species’
innate instinctual urges to be aggressive. After all, our closest relative is
the chimp. It is possible that the “civilized” conception of marriage that
became the norm presumably only after the long hunter-gatherer phase in which
the vast majority of natural selection has occurred is not as congruent with
how our species is “hard-wired” than we might think.
In Anatomy of a Fall, the
word fall refers to not only a physical fall—that of a husband from
either a balcony or an attic window (i.e., suicide or murder)—but also the
decline of a marriage. As the multilevel meanings of fall hint, the film
is deep both intellectually (as a mystery) and emotionally. Beyond the
superficial yet gripping question of whether the wife kills her husband or
whether he commits suicide lies the larger human matter of whether our species’
instinctual aggressive urges are compatible with long-term relationships in
which two people are in prolonged close contact.
Having never been married myself,
I have been astounded from time to time in hearing about married couples who do
everything together, including in their work lives. My mother had a law
practice with her second husband, and of course they lived and socialized
together. When they married and announced that they would be partners of a law
firm (with one poor guy as the third partner, or “wheel”), I thought even as
teenager that it would involve too much “together time.” As the years passed,
long after I had left home for college, I noticed my mother increasingly
wanting to take solo daytrips to a nearby large city to “get away.” It was
clear from her tone of voice that too much “togetherness” had taken its toll on
her. He likely felt the same way, especially if I am correct that our species
is not “hard-wired” to spend so much time with one person over a long period of
time. On one visit, I got a glimpse of the real condition of the marriage.
Nearly constant contact had seemed to extenuate arguments. After I showed the
couple the long version of Cinema Paradiso (1988), in which the budding romance
receives more emphasis, my mother thanked me, saying in a revealing tone,
“We really needed that.” Her husband was silent, but they were sitting
close together on a sofa.
It is no secret that romance,
being “in love” with someone, is typically short-lived; fewer people
investigate whether the residue of the desire for constant contact is
consistent with human nature. Too much contact with another human being may be
incompatible with our more unsavory instincts that can sometimes overwhelm us. Doing
everything together is a romantic notion for people who have just fallen in
love, but the reality of so much contact with the same person is quite another
thing. Of course, some married couples doubtlessly really love each other, and
perhaps some of these remain in love for decades. I am not contending that the
instinctual aggressive urge in our biology overwhelms the instinct for
emotional intimacy in every case. Constant contact, though, can try even cases
in which a couple were in love at some point.
The wife in the film may never
have been in love with her husband. She tells her lawyer that she married her
husband because she believed he understood her by what he told her. She admits
to the court that she has cheated on him, and, interestingly, she shows little
empathy when asked if he was hurt when she told him. The lack of empathy is
perhaps a hint as to whether she is guilty. The film highlights her lies
instead.
Now we get to the crux of the
matter concerning the film and human nature in the context of close
relationships. In the trial, an audio-tape is played of an argument that the
couple had not long before the husband’s death. A visual flashback back to the
argument accompanies the tape until—and this is important—the violence begins,
or, rather, the talking leaps to shouting. The sudden shift back to the
courtroom matches this leap as well as that from the shouting to—just as
abruptly—violence. Not being able to see it renders the incident more vivid and
even real to the audience. Although less wholistic for the viewers, the effect
on emotions, including fear, is greater. Hearing violence without being able to
see it may trigger the primitive (reptilian) part of the brain of “fight or
flight.” Seeing the source of violence may give us a greater sense of being in
control of the violence; it is out there rather than possibly so near to be a
threat.
At that point
of the film, I noticed that the 250 people in the theatre were completely
silent as we heard enraged shouts, glass breaking and a series of hard punches.
Once the couple becomes violent, they are silent. Persuasion has given way to
might, as if force itself could persuade. Hearing the deep thuds of the punches
and claps of the slaps left me emotionally raw. It was as if the microphone
were placed very near the points of contact. Seeing the violence as well as
hearing it would have allowed the audience to situate the violence in space, thus
eliminating the fear that the violence is indeed as up-close as it seems and therefore
could encompass the viewer. Matching the visual images with the sound of the
violence within a scene would normalize the violence in the context of watching
any scene of a movie in which there is action and diegetic sound. The violence would
be seen to be at a distance, even in spite of the up-close deep sounds of the
slapping and punching.
The abrupt
cessation of the visual of the argument as the sounds continue and then the coordinated
end of the shouting with the beginning of the violence as if on cue demonstrates
that the management sound and image is a powerful device by which raw emotions
of an audience can be engaged at a deep level. Perhaps too often directors
become consumed with the calls for more “eye candy” afforded by computer
graphics and in so doing overlook the possibilities from cleverly relating
audio to image. In other words, the basic level of the medium of “talking”
pictures warrants attention.
The scene of the couple’s
argument plays an important role in the narrative too, and is thus powerful
intellectually. When the wife tells the judge that her husband was hitting a
wall (rather than her hitting him), I was surprised that the prosecutor does
not point out that the audio itself of muffled thuds hitting flesh is
inconsistent with a human fist hitting a hard surface. The wife’s convenient claim
is yet another hint that she is guilty, as is her lie that bruises on her arm
are from brushing against a counter’s edge in the kitchen. If her husband was not
hitting a wall during the argument (and hitting a wall during a violent fight seems
implausible or odd even for someone considering suicide) and the counter cannot
account for the bruises, then the evidence of prior violence could be taken as
such by the jury.
Relatedly, I was also surprised
that the prosecutor does not point out to the court that the son’s sudden realization
that his father’s comments about making do once the family’s dog has died are actually
made to prepare the boy for his father’s suicide. I could not find in the audio
and visuals of the flashback of the boy riding in a car with his father anything
that could be taken definitively to point to an intention to commit suicide.
The prosecutor lapses, therefore, in failing to flag the son’s conflict of
interest in wanting to protect his mother from going to jail—an event that
would presumably throw the son into foster care or a group home.
Also subtly revealing is the fact
that the wife is happy rather than in mourning while eating and especially drinking
with her attorney at dinner after the non-guilty verdict. In fact, the two
nearly kiss at one point. Back when she walks outside and sees her husband’s
dead body in the snow near the house, she does not wail; in fact, she seems
rather self-composed.
The film does not reveal at the
end whether the wife has murdered her husband. Nor does the audience get any
indication of whether the husband repeatedly hit a wall during the argument. These
“loose ends” are disconcerting, as is the chaotic music that the husband plays in
the attic while his wife is attempting to be interviewed on the house’s second
floor. The harsh, chaotic diegetic (sourced in the scene) sound is consistent with
the out-of-control quality of human violence, and may even excite the wife
enough to a physically attack her husband. This music is also consistent with
the speechless audio of the violent stage of the argument. The emotional
discomfort from the music pales in comparison with the emotional shock from
listening to the savage violence.
That even a husband and wife can
inflict on each other such violence as surpasses verbalizing a disagreement raises
questions about marriage, given human nature, and, moreover, whether a person
can really know another. How can a person be sure that something really is as
it appears? In the New Testament, Jesus says of a couple to be married, “the
two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.”[1]
Does unity imply being of one nature, and, if not, can two natures who don’t
really know each other be one flesh? The Council of Nicea (325 CE) decided that
Jesus has one essence (ousia) and two natures (hypostasis). Those
natures are distinct, yet of the same essence. Can spouses be of the same essence
if they can’t really know the other’s underlying nature?
Anthropologically, we can ask whether
our notion of marriage is an artificial social-construction that is not fully
compatible with human nature. If we cannot completely know another human being,
perhaps an all-inclusive (i.e., constant) long-term relationship that
monopolizes a person’s interpersonal relations is dangerous. Even if one person
could truly know another, perhaps the strictures of social convention result in
pent-up emotion that at some point explodes. A couple is suddenly in the “state
of nature,” where the repressed aggressive instincts can be expressed. Perhaps
they can be over-expressed from all of the pent-up pressure that has built up.
The film seems to marvel at the
depths to which a marriage can fall, or deconstruct. This is not to say that
the film is an indictment on marriage itself. Couples who fell in love and are
still in love decades later can be differentiated from couples whose loveless
marriage never knew love and continues “for the children.” Even so, it might be
useful to investigate the extent to which the modern social-construction of
marriage is consistent with marriage during our species’ formative “hunter-gatherer”
period. Has marriage become too totalitarian for our nature? By this I mean
both in terms on monogamy and spending so much time together, especially if this
is at the expense of doing things with other people.
So it can be asked whether monogamy
was pre-historical convention. Is monogamy over decades natural, given human instincts
and even reason? In their argument, the couple in the film argue over sex—one
person is depriving the other of sex. As Freud pointed out, repressed eros can
suddenly explode in violence. Perhaps early humans in such a situation did not
have a moral or legal inhibition against getting sex from a third party, as marriage
certificates and churches did not yet exist. Furthermore, perhaps the
hunter-gatherer couples did not spend so much time together. The lack of modern
conveniences meant that more time was taken up with work. So it can be asked: Did
couples spend so much time together, especially if exclusively, during the
hunter-gatherer period?
To the extent that constant, long-term contact up close with a particular person is artificial, and thus contrived as an ideal or as normal, the social construction of the modern marriage may go too far. Why do so much together? Is it wrong to take breaks by doing things with other people? Are friendships naturally (assuming that married couples are friends) so monopolistic? These are questions that the film’s example of a marriage gone so badly wrong can raise. If sound and image are managed with sufficient foresight by a screenwriter, director, and actors, then the message as regards the human condition can be felt on a deep level in addition to be reflected on. The modern conception (and praxis) of marriage in the West may be ahistoric and ill-conforming to the human being. Perhaps we do not pay sufficient regard to the social distance that our human instincts require at times. Our closest relative, after all, is the chimp. We are animals, and though social, were are more than rational beings.
1. The
Gospel of Mark 10:7-8.
