Before Anatomy of a Fall gives us a body, we get a booming steel drum cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” It’s coming from upstairs, where Sandra’s (Sandra Hüller) husband is insulating the attic. But he’s playing the music loudly — possibly out of spite. Sandra is downstairs answering a grad student’s questions about her career as a successful novelist, speaking pretentiously, and predictably, about how reality informs her fiction. Samuel (Samuel Theis), the husband, is also a writer but has never been able to publish a book. Blasting horrible music is perhaps how he expresses that bitterness to his wife. An hour later, he’ll be found outside, head cracked open after tumbling from the third floor.
That’s the initial assumption at least. But…
