Roman Polanski's latest, a quest for justice directed by a fugitive, drips with irony. It's also Polanski's best since 'The Pianist.' [Chicago Tribune]
KnightRidder/Tribune
2:07 PM ET 08/30/2019
Aug. 30--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. |
