Welcome to Auteur, a newsletter that dives deep into the world of film and asks: What can we, as brand builders, learn from this?

Film is one of the richest mediums we have for understanding how narrative, aesthetics, and language can come together to not only make an audience feel something—joy, rage, melancholy—but also make them do something. 

Our goal as brand builders—marketeers, designers, strategists—is the same. We’re here to create worlds that are recognisable and compelling. We’re here to tell stories that feel both personal and universal. And we’re here to create campaigns that resonate so deeply, that our customers and clients become lifelong customers and clients.

Thank you for joining us! Auteur is written and curated by Thursday—a team of strategists, designers and developers based in the historical city of Winchester. We work globally with the ethos that being different isn’t enough—what truly matters is being interesting. 

Written by Shope—our in-house strategist. 

Our second edition explores the mysterious, carefully-paced world of Anatomy of a Fall (2023). Sandra—a published author and mother to her visually-impaired son Daniel—becomes a prime suspect in a murder trial after her husband unceremoniously falls from the 3rd floor of their half-renovated chalet in the French Alps.

As before, minor spoilers lie within, but there is nothing like carving out 2 hours to experience it yourself. 

Every great film, much like every great brand, has a defining concept or conversation that it owns.

Underneath stoic, stilted scenes where dialogue is the subject—think sensitive conversations between mother and son, rapid-fire exchanges between lawyer and defendant—lies a recurring message: This is my story—do you believe me?

Every moment implores the audience to decide on whether Sandra did, in fact, kill her husband, but Justine Triet, the director, holds us at arm’s length and refuses to hand us the truth. She wants us to work for it.

Visually, framing feels distant and restrained, rendering us more observers than participants. There is no warmth here, no invitation to explore the nuts and bolts of this tragedy together. Further heightened by the chill that surrounds the film—literally through the snow-covered landscape, and figuratively through the absence of honest, full-bodied displays of emotion—her aim is to explore the cold, hard mechanics of reality vs perception.

“You need to start seeing yourself the way others are going to perceive you. A trial is not about the truth”.

Endless repetition, retelling, and re-enacting of Samuel’s fall from different perspectives force us to interrogate what we believe. We’re pushed to question everything.

Sandra is a deeply ambiguous character. Or perhaps she’s just human. Either way, it’s hard to understand who she is and what she cares about. One moment she’s overcome with grief, and the next she’s assessing blood splatters and how best her lawyer can link them to a suicide attempt. She drinks, but she’s not a drunk. She cheats, but she’s not dishonest. She slaps her husband, throws glasses at a wall, yet she’s not violent. 

Is she a hero? Or a villain? It’s unclear.

One of the biggest challenges of the strategic process is getting clients comfortable committing to one thing: a central idea or a succinct positioning statement without the word ‘and’ in it.

Here, we see the risks of ambiguity play out in real-time. It leaves your audience unable to decide what you’re about, and worse, leads them to draw their own (likely, unflattering) conclusions.

The resistance brands have when it’s time to commit to one thing is a fear that their customer will fail to realise “we also do this!” What we forget is that a prospective client or customer will learn about a brand, over time. There’s no mad rush. 

“What you say is just a little part of the whole situation.” 

We see this in how the film unfolds, piece by piece. Slowly and steadily, new information comes to light, characters evolve in surprising ways, flashbacks reveal how past connects to present. The effect is a story that not only keeps you hooked, but has great resonance long after it finishes. 

It teaches us that to make an impression, we should consider how much needs to be said in each moment to ensure it’s heard.

A story has to be believable, meaning it has to make sense in our heads and in our hearts. Its believability has nothing to do with how loudly, earnestly, or masterfully you tell it, but everything to do with how it’s received.

“I did not kill him.”

“That’s not the point.”

This is something Vincent, Sandra’s lawyer, was deeply preoccupied with. He knew that the journey between Sandra’s words and the heads and hearts of the jury was a long one, and what they hear may end up being different to what she says. So much so, he urges her to speak in French—the native language of the court, but one she isn’t fluent in—to minimise the risk of misinterpretation.

Notably, the story that secured Sandra’s innocence existed in stark contrast to the others told throughout the film. It was not a deciphering of the timeline, or an explanation about the angle at which the body fell. It was not a rehashing of what ‘objectively’ did or did not happen. Rather, it was Daniel’s highly subjective and heartfelt testimony at the final hour. 

His account, filled with simplicity and childlike honesty, became the most believable piece of the puzzle because it took context into account.

Prompt: Is your brand telling a story that fits into the world your audience is experiencing right now? Is it coherent and comprehensible? Are you accounting for any preconceptions or misconceptions?

Thank you for reading, and I’d love to hear if and how this made you consider your brand-building efforts a little differently.

Until next time,

Shope