Anatomy of a Fall dir. Justine Triet

The first half of Anatomy of a Fall, the recent film from French writer and director Justine Triet, tells you many times over what it will not do. When the central character (and suspect) Sandra tells her lawyer Vincent that she is innocent, he says (if a little pityingly), “That is not the point.” Her son, Daniel, soon after finding his father (and her husband’s) dead body, tells her, “I want to understand.” Later, Vincent warns Sandra that she must begin to see herself the way “others will perceive you.” This is the whole movie–the perception versus the story versus “the truth,” whatever that is. The audience are the others, and we will spend the whole movie trying to understand. 

Triet begins the film with the moments immediately preceding the fall and the moments after. We never see the fall itself. The rest of the film devotes its entire length to ripping apart the scenes we watch in the beginning to the point where you doubt yourself about what you thought about what you saw . . . and then Triet rips apart what lies underneath. As the film dives deeper into each word spoken between Sandra and her husband, the direction pulls us further back. Triet frequently puts characters behind stands, cameras, video, computers, memory, and language itself to remind the audience at every breath that we are seeing a façade. The film is less concerned with what is true than what truth means overall. 

Forget the whodunnit aspect, forget the evidence, forget the courtroom dramatics (though all of it will be fun). At the heart of this film is a family drama: between a husband and wife and then later between a mother and son. “Sometimes, a couple is a kind of chaos,” Sandra explains to the courtroom. As chaotic as they are, the film is anything but. In fact, it’s a must-see. 

—Peyton

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

I can easily categorize the majority of my book recommendations these days as “Books Peyton Told Me To Read,” and here we are again. Harrow the Ninth is the second book in the Locked Tomb Series by Tamsyn Muir, a series that Peyton has written a recommendation for Close Read previously. At the risk of sounding redundant in my own singing of its praises, I have to write about the novel that totally dominated my January entertainment consumption. 

Harrow the Ninth was an entire experience. It threw me into the depths of a discombobulated mind, making me question my own sanity from beginning to end. I’m not going to lie, it was a difficult read, just as Gideon the Ninth was, especially at the beginning. I think I would have preferred to have read this novel directly after the first, rather than reading it almost a year later, because I had forgotten a lot of the integral characters and their fates from the first story. That being said, even from the beginning it is clear that something about the Harrow we came to know from the first novel is off. That alone was an immediate hook, because there is an innate desire to solve the mystery. Early on, the story starts to switch between a third person and second person point of view that both follow Harrow, and the reader is quickly forced to contend with two narrators that are not wholly reliable (perhaps not completely on purpose, but a little bit). The unreliable narrators and the POV switches mirror the destabilization of Harrow and the novel itself; it puts us almost directly into her psyche. In a vulnerable moment within the novel, Harrow describes herself as “fractured,” and that has truly stuck with me as the summary of her character, her mind, her body, and the structure of the novel.

It is satisfying to unravel the mystery that is Harrow’s mind. The twists this novel unveils are spectacular, and the Locked Tomb world seems to be getting bigger every second. Side note, and completely related: the necromancy in this novel is so sick! It’s fun to see what these powerful Lyctors are capable of. If three whole recommendation posts haven’t put you onto this series yet, I’m not sure what will.

—Elise

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin 

Having purchased The Fifth Season two years ago per Peyton’s recommendation, I decided this year that it was time to use the book for its intended purpose, rather than just as a decorative object on my shelf. And boy was I in for a treat. 

Truthfully, I initially found the Fifth Season to be a bit dry. The world building was not particularly impressive, and due to the fact that the story was told through the perspectives of three separate characters, I found myself confused as to which lenses I was supposed to see the narrative through. Suffering from the initial confusion and bewildering dive that jumping into a dense fantasy novel elicits, I was ready to call it quits. Why force myself to read something thick and difficult to stomach if it kills the desire to read long term? However, I didn’t have to wait long until I began to see the various narrative threads begin to weave together, as the three separate characters and their individual stories collided. In a truly magnificent fashion, Jemisin maneuvers around the reader, entrapping them in what seems to be a standard fantasy tale, only to catch them completely by surprise in a stunning display of genius and masterful craft. I won’t go into it anymore as I believe this is a literary journey that everyone should experience for themselves, but it would be difficult to walk away from this title without having experienced the heights of what writing can achieve. 

—Eugene