What makes a monster? It’s a question we can consider from two perspectives (two of many possible). The first is those primordial things that make up evil: those pieces of the human condition that must be foreclosed such that a person can do monstrous things. The second involves an act of creation. What is it within our civilized society that seeks to identify and call out the bad of humankind? Who crafts the narratives that cast some as villains and others as victims, and through what contexts are these narratives codified and/or agreed upon? At least…agreed upon enough that stories with monsters become tropes that are legible to us, or agreed upon enough that guilty verdicts can be reached in homicide cases.

Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall presents us with a contained incident (the eponymous fall) and a proceeding attempt by many parties to Continue reading Anatomy of a Fall (2023) Movie Review →