How ‘Marriage Story’ influenced ‘Anatomy of a Fall’
The most talked-about snubs of the Academy Awards saw Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie shunned for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Actress’ consideration, which makes it more than a little ironic that Anatomy of a Fall was nominated in both categories after drawing its influences from a film by Barbie‘s co-writer.
Noah Baumbach and Gerwig won’t be competing head-to-head in multiple categories with Justine Triet after Barbie was shortlisted for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ while Anatomy of a Fall is recognised as an original work, but the filmmaker was happy to share the inspirations she lifted from Marriage Story in crafting her own breakthrough hit.
One of awards season’s breakout titles, Triet’s latest feature secured five nominations in total including ‘Best Picture’, with the riveting hybrid of generational family drama and legal procedural winning rave reviews for its watertight script, impeccable direction, and ever-increasing tension.
Baumbach’s Marriage Story was in a similar boat after netting nods for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actor’ ‘Best Actress’, and ‘Best Original Screenplay’ to complement Laura Dern’s win for ‘Best Supporting Actress’, making them two peas in an emotionally-charged pod.
It’s stating the obvious to say the shared DNA between the two stems from a fracturing marriage, and even if they play out in entirely different ways relative to the narrative that surrounds them, Triet nonetheless credited Marriage Story‘s most heated exchange for directly informing the on-camera bickering between distant spouses in her own movie.
“I was inspired by Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, especially the scene of the fight between Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson,” she said to Picturehouses. “I love the film, I find her role a lot more fragile than his. The scene of the argument in Anatomy of a Fall is almost in dialogue with that scene. I thought, ‘I will give this woman some things to answer with.'”
Sandra Hüller’s Sandra Voyter and Samuel Theis’ Samuel Maleski might find their union forcibly ended by the end of the first scene in Anatomy of a Fall, but their heated argument is still played to the courtroom during proceedings as a means to try and establish whether or not the former is genuinely responsible for his death after he mysteriously toppled out of a window at the family home.
It hasn’t spawned quite as many memes as Marriage Story‘s house-shaking argument between Driver’s Charlie Barber and Johansson’s Nicole inadvertently did, but it’s every bit as vicious, fraught, and heart-wrenching as the standout and signature scene from Baumbach’s acclaimed portrait of a shattering family.
It remains to be seen whether Anatomy of a Fall can go one step further and outdo Marriage Story at the Oscars by outstripping its trophy hall, but it would take a brave soul to consider viewing them back-to-back as a double-feature, with the prospect of emerging on the other side as an emotional wreck a serious danger.
