VENICE, Italy _ Director Roman Polanski can't go anywhere on the film festival circuit without provoking a typhoon of controversy since he fled the U.S. more than 40 years ago after entering a guilty plea relating to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old.
Outside France, Poland and Switzerland, the director can't go anywhere, period, without risking extradition. This is why the maker of such chilling cinematic achievements as "Knife in the Water," 'Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown" is not in Venice with his latest effort, "An Officer and a Spy," also known as "J'Accuse."
It is a masterly period drama _ Polanski's best work since "The Pianist" 17 years ago, for those interested in aesthetics and film craft amid everything else going on with the controversial festival inclusion of a Polanski movie.
"An Officer and a Spy" recounts the famously anti-Semitic railroading of Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jewish army officer convicted of high treason with the flimsiest of evidence that turned out to be falsified. Louis Garrel portrays Dreyfus, imprisoned for nearly five years on Devil's Island. The film's protagonist, however, is not Dreyfus; it's the French army intelligence officer Georges Picquart, whose role in the notorious "Dreyfus affair" is less well-known, certainly outside France. Best known in the U.S. for his Oscar-winning turn in "The Artist," Jean Dujardin subtly energizes this role.
The irony of 86-year-old Polanski, a fugitive from justice, returning to form with a story entirely driven by a different quest for justice _ that's a sizable irony, all right. For a feature included in the film's program notes here at the Venice festival, Polanski told French writer Pascal Bruckner: "I am familiar with many of the workings of the apparatus of persecution shown in the film, and that has clearly inspired me."
Festival director Alberto Barbera has come under attack for including "An Officer and a Spy" in the competition slate ever since the list came out, especially in light of a mere two female directors (among 19 males) vying for the festival's Golden Lion prizes next weekend.
Barbera defended his decision this way in the opening press conference: "I am convinced that we have to distinguish between the artist and the man. The history of art is full of artists who committed crimes of different nature, of a different seriousness. Nevertheless, we have continued to consider and to admire in many cases their works of art. And the same is true of Polanski who is my opinion, one of the last masters still active in European cinema." Valiant defender of classical cinema or classic, out-of-touch apologist squaring up with the #MeToo era?
The main competition jury president, Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel ("Zama"), had the nerve to offer a nuanced response to the Polanski affair. Unlike Barbera, she said earlier this week, "I don't separate the work from the author," though she added: "I have recognized a lot of humanity in Polanski's previous films."
Still, in Martel's initial festival press conference comments, she noted the presence of the Polanski film in the 21-title main slate made her "uncomfortable." The film's producers started making noises about withdrawing the film altogether. Martel later clarified her comments in a separate statement, noting: "I have no prejudice against the film and naturally I will watch it in the same way as all other films in competition."
