Would Polanski's bid be possible without HBO doc?
It's worth asking if Roman Polanski would be asking right now for a U.S. court to drop his conviction on child-sex charges had not filmmaker Marina Zenovich made "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." The documentary, which lit Sundance on fire earlier this year, will be on the Oscar short list not just because of its high-profile subject but because of what Zenovich did with her film: cast new doubt on a 30-year-old case and ask whether Polanski wasn't justified in fleeing to France, where he remains a so-called fugitive from justice to this day.
Zenovich doesn’t dispute the particulars of Polanski’s involvement with a 13-year-old girl. Instead she explains how Polanski might not be a pervert but a man whose relationship to pleasure was forever altered by two horrifying events: the Holocaust, which he survived but his parents did not; and the slaughter of his wife and unborn baby at the hands of the Mansons while he was off making a movie.
And then Zenovich goes further, showing persuasively that the judge presiding over Polanski’s case was determined not to give him a fair shake, besides which he was a megalomaniac with Cecil B. de Mille tendencies inside his courtroom and chambers.
