...UD reads some recent words about him from her old buddy, Lisa Nesselson:
[The best] French film of the year, hands down, is Roman Polanski’s “J’accuse.” Polanski is an absolute master of every aspect of filmmaking, he works with the best actors and technicians — which means they are eager to work with HIM — and the result is an incredibly important film that’s also thrilling to watch.
I’m typing this on Jan 29th — the Cesar nominations were announced today and “J’accuse” leads with 12 nominations. That means that a majority of the 4,313 members of the Cesars Academy are in the mood to champion excellence. Whatever you think of Polanski himself and his confirmed and alleged bad behavior in decades past, it’s impossible to deny that “J’accuse” is outstanding. I see no rationale that holds up to scrutiny for contending that he shouldn’t have been given the money to make it in the first place or that it shouldn’t be shown. The hypocrisy makes me ill. It has been a matter of public record since 1977 that Polanski raped then-13-year-old Samantha Geimer and now, all of a sudden, mostly young (but not exclusively) protestors are vandalizing the areas around theaters to write “Polanski is a Rapist” and “Theaters Are Complicit With a Rapist” on buildings and the street. The City has to remove that stuff — it costs money.
For some useful perspective, I urge everybody to read Geimer’s excellent autobiography “The Girl” from 2013. She’s very smart, very funny, very self-aware and she was delighted when Polanski won the Oscar for “The Pianist” in 2003. Hey, protestors — that was 17 years ago! They’re hardly pals but the only person he owed an apology to was her — not us, not society, not people so ignorant that they think “Somebody else could have made that film.” Geimer was delighted when “J’accuse” won the Silver Lion in Venice in September 2019 — “Joker” won the Golden Lion. We’re told that we must listen to women but hardly anybody cares to “listen” to Geimer — who is in her 50s and (understandably!) hates being frozen in time as a 13 year old to feed other peoples’ misplaced outrage. When she says that it’s pointless to protest or boycott Polanski and to please take your outrage elsewhere where it might do some good and make the world a better place, the but-but-but-he-raped-you-and-you’re-a-victim-for-eternity crowd won’t accept her own clearly stated assessment that being sodomized by a grown man at a tender age was highly unpleasant but not eternally traumatic.
I think she’s a role model for overcoming the fallout from sexual assault but hardly anybody wants to view her that way. By the transitive power of faulty reasoning, an awful lot of people think Polanski shouldn’t make movies and if he does, you certainly shouldn’t go see them.
UD is definitely a judge the art, not the artist type; but she cringes when Lisa gets to “highly unpleasant.”
February 29th, 2020 at 6:24AM
Golly, Geimer turned out fine, maybe we should stop charging rapists altogether. And let’s change “rape” to “highly unpleasant sexual experience.” Now why are those kids upset?
It’s just a fucking movie.
February 29th, 2020 at 7:54AM
Wait, her logic is that because the victim recovered, we should forgive the attacker?
That’s…uh…an interesting perspective.
February 29th, 2020 at 9:27AM
Her argument is that he is an Artist and produces Important Art, and that trumps being a rapist. Plus his victim is fine so shruggy emoticon!
Seems like the Academy could find a better way to demonstrate their anti anti-semitism than collaborating with a rapist.
February 29th, 2020 at 11:16AM
Charles Manson was an artist too! His confirmed and alleged bad behavior shouldn’t have prevented him from making his unique contribution to music.
February 29th, 2020 at 11:28AM
Many artists are morally bad people. Indeed, it’s likely that there’s a connection between aesthetically thrilling and morally bad– it’s not a coincidence that Satan is always so interesting. Do we give up art because of that?
March 1st, 2020 at 12:52PM
MattF
You’re getting confused with a character(Satan) and an artist who writes/paints/sings/about him.
Maybe sucking up to money and abusing less powerful people is a prerequisite for artistic accomplishment…”I couldn’t have made Chinatown without raping a child” Now that would be an interesting Oscar acceptance speech.