Americans love to forgive. We also love to give out awards. If we can do those two things at the same time, all the better.
Even though he's not the front runner, Roman Polanski's best director nomination for this year's Oscars is indicative of our capacity to let almost any outcast back into the fold with open arms. It's been 25 years since Polanski, nominated for The Pianist and also the director of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, fled the country before being sentenced for having unlawful sex with a minor. Ever since, he has lived in France and made mostly forgettable films. He didn't do many interviews as he dwelled in that pariah hinterland where the sun never shines and people whisper about you in harsh, cautionary tones.
All that has changed with The Pianist. Based on musician Waldyslaw Szpilman's autobiography, the film follows one man's unlikely journey through Nazi-occupied Poland. Adding to the movie's gravity, Polanski, whose own mother died in a concentration camp, has infused the horrors with his own experiences, drawing out the absurdity and insanity of the drama. Beginning with its Palme d'Or victory at last year's Cannes Film Festival, the movie has continued to gain critical praise. And while it once seemed impossible to imagine Polanski ever being in the thick of an Oscar race again, there he is.
In the current era, the Academy Awards are a thoroughly ridiculous, expensive campaign, not unlike your typical presidential election. But while Harvey Weinstein is inundating the trades with ads for Chicago and Gangs of New York, Polanski has been relatively mum. But he's gotten his fair share of support -- even from a most unlikely source.
In February, Samantha Geimer, the then-13-year-old Polanski slept with all those years ago, defended him as an artist. "I don't really have any hard feelings toward him, or any sympathy, either," Geimer wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "But I believe that Mr. Polanski and his film should be honored according to the quality of the work. What he does for a living and how good he is at it have nothing to do with me or what he did to me." Describing herself as happily married with three children, she asserted that Polanski fled America because he was fearful that the judge in his case was going to back out of a promised plea bargain. Feeling tricked and betrayed, Polanski was suddenly staring down a 50-year sentence, she said, after it had been agreed that the 40-day incarceration he had already served would be enough.
She later appeared on Larry King to tell the same story, and you couldn't help feeling that she was doing a helluva P.R. job to boost Polanski's Oscar chances, whether intentionally or not. After all, her comments couldn't be better timed -- the deadline for Oscar ballots had not yet come and gone -- and it's not unreasonable to think that her statements might sway voters on the fence about Polanski's questionable character. If she can forgive him, shouldn't the Academy?
For me, the answer is easy because I can separate the person from the artist. Listen, I love Woody Allen, so you can imagine the amount of justifying I have to do when I meet new people. The artist creates art, while the human being mostly screws up his life and hurts those around him. One half of the person doesn't negate or excuse the other, but they should be judged on their own terms. And the Oscars, which are nothing but a popularity contest anyway, are meant to honor innovation and talent, not to be moralists or cops.
Of course, Hollywood hasn't had to worry too much about Polanski -- or his crimes -- since his European exodus. Certainly, he's never come close to matching the peaks of his early career. As a friend said, "He's been living out there in Europe, wrestling with his demons, and churning out crap." The crap is what most folks concern themselves with, as if bad movies are even more embarrassing than bad ethics. Too often, the most difficult thing about defending an artist is when that person's crime occurs when he isn't making his best work. Whether it's Paul Reubens getting caught pleasuring himself in a theater or R. Kelly facing his own underage sex charges, creative individuals who are artistically floundering get even less slack for their crimes. It's not bad enough that they've done wrong -- their work sucks, too.
Thankfully for Polanski, The Pianist does more than just not suck. Centering on evil Nazis and terrified Jews, the film is (in no particular order) Serious, Artistic, Important, and Thoughtful. Unfortunately, I think the movie's also Emotionally Distant To The Point Of Being Inert, but there is no question that it's made with care and feeling. For the first time in a long while, you sense that Polanski isn't just floundering in second-rate weirdo nonsense, that he's legitimately expressing ideas on a worthwhile subject. The Pianist lacks the dark brilliance of Chinatown or Rosemary's Baby -- it's a little too stuffy, familiar, and drawn out -- and yet it's the kind of prestige picture that always gets Hollywood's attention, the equivalent of the prodigal son returning with his hat in his hand.
That's why we find ourselves in the mess we're now in as we debate Polanski's past. For so long, we didn't have to concern ourselves with the niggling questions -- the gray areas -- of the case. Did Polanski, still haunted by the brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate and unborn baby at the hands of Charles Manson's followers, simply make one bad judgment when he seduced Geimer? Was he, as Geimer claims, double-crossed by a judge out to make his name at the expense of the famous director? Was he forced to look like a coward by escaping to France, never to return to the U.S., so that he wouldn't spend most of his life in prison on a too-harsh sentence? We don't know, and, frankly, we didn't care. He was irrelevant, a punch line, another of those fly-so-high, crash-so-hard guys we love reading about in juicy tell-alls like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. He had done the crime, and his punishment was his terrible post-American career.
Whether it's the movies they make or the people who make them, Oscar hopefuls often dabble in the notion of deliverance, of overcoming ridiculously difficult personal or societal obstacles, of becoming better people. What's ironic about The Pianist is that, while the film itself subverts those easy clichés, the film's success has allowed Polanski to have the sort of third-act comeback we associate with your typical biopic. The funny thing is, neither he nor his main character seem that interested in such tidy resolutions.
Adrien Brody's Szpilman is by no means a bad man before the Nazi occupation -- he doesn't, for instance, have the iffy ethics of Schindler's List's title character -- and his survival is in no way dependent on him changing or growing to become a deeper, better person. In fact, The Pianist argues quite the opposite point. Tragedy and misfortune find everyone, and the most noble human beings don't necessarily live. Szpilman's odyssey is one of luck, well-timed help, and illogic. There's nothing inherently heroic about his tale -- and who says that he was meant to learn something from the whole terrible experience? He made it out alive, but he could have just as easily died. Nothing more to it than that. When we see him at the end of the film, returned to his life as a renowned pianist, you would never suspect he'd changed at all -- unless, of course, you saw the film's first two hours. Redemption is a precious luxury of art that only rarely happens in real life.
Polanski should be commended for not turning this story into sentimental treacle -- especially considering that taking the weepy way out would have guaranteed him much more sympathy from the Academy. As cynical as it sounds, Holocaust movies are the surest way to confirm your status as a significant, caring, mature filmmaker: Show the wickedness, deliver some brutal killings, milk the audience's guilt and compassion. Whether they're done well or not is almost irrelevant. Polanski knows his subject matter -- he lived through it and it certainly helped define him -- and he infuses the work with his own sensibility. But just as with Szpilman, he doesn't assume his past troubles mean he's entitled to special treatment now.
The wave of accolades and the many Oscar nominations for The Pianist have both redeemed the director and reopened the artist-vs.-person debate. Geimer has forgiven him, and the Academy -- regardless of whether he wins or not -- seem to have forgiven him. Polanski won't be attending the ceremony for fear of arrest, but I imagine there will be passionate, vocal support whenever his film is listed among other nominees in various categories. It's unfortunate that they're celebrating The Pianist for the wrong reason, as a way of congratulating Polanski on his "personal redemption" after all those bad movies. I don't think this film is a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think that the director told this story because he wanted to, not because he calculated it would be his way back into Hollywood. Surviving is its own reward, the film says, and that's certainly something Polanski knows deep in his bones. When Brody's Szpilman finishes his performance at the end of the film, once he is back to his normal life and is safe, the audience explodes into long, loving applause. Szpilman graciously but modestly responds to the ovation. But we know that his real happiness seems to come from performing once again. You don't have to love The Pianist -- or even Polanski, for that matter -- to appreciate that important distinction.
