Brilliant, perceptive, eloquent and courageous. Part of the 60s and 70s cadre of auteurs who's work continues to excite and enthrall. A child of the Holocaust, escapee of communist Poland, bereft husband of the doomed Sharon Tate. He would normally be a sympathetic figure, an inspirational and star-crossed survivor.
But here is an inconvenient truth. In 1978 while he was 44 years old, coming off the masterpiece that was Chinatown, the acclaimed director plied a 13 year old girl with alcohol and drugs. Over her repeated protestations and objections, he then proceeded to have sex with her.
Faced with the prospect of a balky judge who seemed set to renege on a soft plea agreement and instead impose a long term prison sentence, Polanski fled to the safe confines of his native France. There, a limited extradition treaty meant that he could live out his life free of the consequences of his actions in far away California. Until his recent arrest in Switzerland, he may well have done so.
The foibles of the rich and famous are such that they're often just one unfortunate decision or act away from plunging into personal chaos. And when the inevitable occurs, it's almost understandable that those who inhabit the world of the well-off and well-connected look after each other's interests. As their excesses lead to brushes with the law, they close ranks and protect their own. This is particularly true with people blessed with some kind of artistic talent where those who come into contact with greatness are too willing to give reprehensible behavior a pass in light of the body of a person's work.
Polanski's friends and admirers in the business have leapt to his defense, demanding that he be released. The irony of no less than Woody Allen, the subject of his own brush with questionable pubescent coupling, signing a petition to that effect says a lot about the tone deafness of the denizens of the entertainment industry. The director should be spared prosecution because so much time has passed and besides he is, after all, blessed with the kind of gift we all wished we had. Even the victim in the case, then as now, just wants the whole sordid affair to go away.
While the prosecutors in Los Angeles seem determined to make an example of the fugitive, the burning question as to the long term efficacy of delayed justice is one that must be asked. The open and shut case of 30 years ago has further devolved into a battle between those who think that nobody is above the law and those who think that no purpose is served by dredging up decades-old wrongs.
There is an argument to be made that we are all imperfect and don't fulfill the lofty ideas we hold, or in Polanski's case, the transcendent art we produce. History is, after all, replete with examples of colossal men with feet of clay. The acknowledgement that someone can be flawed in one way yet inspirational in another represents a mature and sophisticated understanding of human nature. That a middle aged man forced himself on a girl barely in her teens challenges our notion of just how much deviation from the tortured artist script we're willing to accept.
Whatever his achievements, Roman Polanski is a rapist. Given the circumstances of the crime, living a life of swanky comfort, personal fulfillment and adulatory bliss hardly seems like justice.
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