A Word On Roman Polanski (Or, Why [Some] Of His Defenders are Degenerate Morons)

By now, I'm sure you're all aware that director Roman Polanski has been nabbed by authorities in Switzerland for his rape of then-13 year old Samantha Gailey in Los Angeles thirty-some years ago. After days of reading about the issue and arguing futilely about it on (where else?) Film General, here's my two cents.

A lot of people, from Hollywood directors to French politicians to geeky FGers, are rallying to Polanski's defense and making him into something of a perverse cause celebre. There are legitimate reasons, perhaps, to drop or reduce the charges on Polanski:

- Although I'm more inclined to believe the victim's side of the story in this instance, to be absolutely fair to Polanski, there's enough ambiguity in the situation that there could possibly be room for doubt as to what exactly went on.

- The crime happened thirty-two years ago. (I will say, though, that there is no statute of limitations since he was convicted and then fled.)

- Polanski himself is 76, hasn't (apparently) engaged in such activities since then, and at his age is arguably no danger to anyone.

- The victim herself has expressed willingness to forgive Polanski, on more than one occasion. This has little legal strength but it's certainly a powerful emotional appeal, and might in and of itself make the justice system's actions cold-blooded and hard to defend.

- The judge who was prosecuting him was an ambitious prick who planned to railroad Polanski for little good reason, and so he had at least some justification for fleeing.

These are arguments that, even if I take issue with them up to a point, I could accept and at least be on the same wavelength as. But too many people, from the misogynist amoral teenage apes of IMDB to the bone-headed gliteratti of Hollywood and beyond, to even French and Polish politicians (!), more specious, idiotic reasons are being advanced, that range from the illogical to the idiotic to the insane.

- What Polanski did was not a crime, or else should not be.

- There are people with far worse crimes out there, why should the US focus on Polanski?

- The girl in question was old enough to say no, she consented to it, etc. Some have even gone so far as to argue that because she may have had sexual relations prior to that, she somehow deserves it.

- Polanski has somehow atoned for the crime through his admittedly traumatic life.

- The American criminal justice is corrupt, mean-spriited and barbaric.

- Polanski has made a lot of great films since the crime - doesn't that exonerrate him?

Allow me to address each of these points in fairly abbreviated fashion:

- That's not for you to say, is it, bonehead? Too bad we don't have your wisdom to enlighten all of us, eh wot?

- Bullshit moral equivalence. What Henry Kissinger did in Chile or Cambodia or Angola may well be a crime, but it has no bearing on this case in particular, so drop your smug act of superiority. Unless you want to argue that only murderers and capital criminals should be prosecuted.

- Although Ms. Gailey (now Geiner) has expressed willingness to forgive Polanski, she has not changed her story but for a few details. Her testimony seems to indicate the equivalent of a date rape, where she was drugged and clearly resisted his advances. Not to mention, I would seriously argue that a 13 year old girl - let alone one who was drunk, on drugs, and being advanced upon by a much-older, very-famous film director - isn't old enough and sound enough to consent to sex anyway (If you believe otherwise, you're either overgeneralizing or just being a pig.) As for the latter point, I hope I don't need to detail how misogynistic and disgusting it is - but to the amoral monkeys who don't see pedophilia as a bad thing, well, there's no hope in persuading them anyway.

- Polanski certainly had one hell of an awful life, losing relatives in the Holocaust and the murder of Sharon Tate by the Mansons. Should that alone clear his record? No. Pretty much every criminal has some background circumstances that might drive them to crime, from a broken home to a traumatic incident to mental illness. Should they all be pardoned too? In any case, Polanski hasn't expressed any regret over the incident, so why should we factor this in?

- Maybe so, but I don't see it as being remotely relevant to this particular case. He committed a crime, was convicted of it, and fled justice. Most repulsive, to my way of thinking, is the implication that Polanski is somehow a martyr to justice for sodomizing a thirteen year old girl. Come on, you idiots, let's not make him into Martin Luther King Jr. (although it wouldn't surprise me after the way Hollywood rolled out the red carpet for Tookie Williams and Mumia Abu Jamal).

- This last one is, without a doubt, the most idiotic. If it were confined to IMDbers, that would be expected and no big deal, but members of the French and Polish governments are saying as much in protest of his arrest. Give me a fucking break, people! Art undoubtedly has its value in society, but that does not exonerrate an individual from responsibility for their own actions. To quote George Orwell, "If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear."

Not much more to say, except that those who advance such arguments reveal a great deal of unpleasantness about themselves.

Let's face facts here. Whatever the reasons advanced, most are defending him because he's a film director, plain and simple. If Polanski were Joe Schmoe, a politician, or (God forbid!) a priest, these people would either not care or be all over him like Mr. Freeze on an ice pun. But because Polanski is an artist and a celebrity, he's somehow above the law, and we must unquestioningly forgive him his trespasses.

Well, screw that. If you really think that a film career exonerrates a man of a heinous crime, you've forfeited my sympathy and respect, and outed yourself as an amoral ape.

Rosemary's Baby, Or: What the Fuck?

Well. Two days ago we viewed Roman Polanksi's Rosemary's Baby (1968) in film class. Over the last two days I've tried to think of something to say about it, and at this moment I'm still not 100% sure what I think. I think it's the ending that threw me off, more than anything else.

The ending, where Rosemary (Mia Farrow) confronts her demonic progeny in the midst of the Satanic coven run by her next door neighbors, is, for me, one of the most inexplicable scenes in cinematic history. It's hard at first, second, and even third glance to truly grasp the intention of this scene. One assumes that it is intentionally humorous because of the simultaneously non-chalant and over-the-top nature of the scene. You don't have characters screaming "GOD IS DEAD! HAIL SATAN!" while dressed in house clothes and sipping tea, or acting as if the distraut, knife-wielding Rosemary's biggest problem is being out of bed, or Asians excitedly taking snapshots of the Anti-Christ, and expect to be taken seriously, do you? It seems that the intent of the scene is a sort of satire of religion (which we'll deal with presently); but after all of the suspenseful and horrific build-up to this moment, it turns out to be a poorly done and painfully stupifying anti-climax, on the level of The Game and There Will Be Blood for sheer audience-insulting stupidity.

A pity, as the film was a reasonably effective thriller up to that point. It involves a young couple, Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavettes), a struggling actor, and his pretty and perky young wife Rosemary (Farrow). They move into a New York City apartment with a long and tragic history of murders, accidents, and suicides - and witchcraft. They befriend their neighbors, the elderly Castavets (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), but after a terrifying night of drug-induced sex with her husband, Rosemary becomes pregnant and finds her life unravelling. Attended to obsessively by the Castavets, her husband, and Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Ballamy), Rosemary's health deteriorates, and she immediately begins to suspect that something is wrong, and that her baby is in danger. Turns out, of course, that her neighbors are witches who are planning to use her baby as the anti-Christ. I don't know about you, but I hate it when that happens.

On a technical level, Polanski achieves a lot of praise. The film is wonderfully banal, establishing its horror within a purely realistic and dull situation. When one calls the annoying, gabby old bag next door a witch, they generally aren't speaking literally - but you never know. The movie isn't really scary, but then it doesn't much try to be scary in any classical sense, more disconcerting and nightmarish than anything else. If there were a payoff at the end, this would be even more worthy of praise; Polanski goes the wise route by leaving the whole story open to interpretation until, well, the ending. The film's high point is undoubtedly the sex scene, the skillful editing of Rosemary's various drug-induced dreams and the horrifying reality of what's happening to her is a brilliant, surreal bit of editing; it's perhaps the closest one could come to conveying a fever dream on screen. The acting is pretty good; Mia Farrow manages to make Rosemary's increasingly adrift state and growing suspicions highly believable, John Cassavettes is convincing as perhaps the ultimate Horse's Ass (he sells out God, Rosemary, and the entire human race for a part in a play - thanks, jackass), Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer are quite funny as the unlikely witches, and Maurice Evans has an effective but all-too-brief part as the film's resident Van Helsing/Dr. Loomis/Detective Arbogast/etc..

Of course, the movie has some interesting subtext which an aspiring film student such as myself feels obliged to delve into. The movie serves most obviously as a metaphor for the many traumas which women go through during pregnancy. Rosemary is relegated by her pregnancy to a passive role, unable really to protect herself, and she is effectively controlled by her husband and her neighbors; she is at the mercy of an unhelpful doctor and friends and family a bit too interested in her pregnancy. Of course, there are her own fears about the baby, as she continues experiencing pain, discomfort, and horrifying dreams, which prove quite reasonable when the baby turns out to be not crippled or retarded, but the Messenger of Evil (and a distant cousin of Damien, no doubt).

That's pretty obvious subtext, but our film class felt it much more fruitful (pun not intended) to explore the undeniable religious subtext of the film. Besides the Satanist's continual mockery of religion (blasted as being "all spectacle"), the movie plays as an inverted view on religion and its role in society, family, and pregnancy. I succinctly offer this reading: The movie is REALLY about a woman being forced to have a baby she doesn't want by her family and the Church. Abortion and contraception are not an option, regardless of how desirable they may be. The movie hints at this reading throughout, from the aforementioned commentary by supporting characters, to the flashbacks to Rosemary's Catholic school upbringing, to the otherwise inexplicable scene where Rosemary, in her fever dream state, kissing the Pope's ring (which is the same as her Satanic "good luck charm"). The ending is an obvious mirror image of the Nativity, down to the inverted crucifix over the baby's crib. A magazine posing the question "Is God dead?" shows the dilemna at stake here. (One must ask, however: If God is dead, how can Satan exist?) Clearly, religion has not only become hypocritical and reduced to spectacle, it has also turned to worshipping Satan.

So, that's all well and good - "Interesting, very interesting, perhaps even true" - and for the most part adds up to a quality film. But what the fuck is up with that climax? Please answer me that question. Who the Hell thought it would be a good idea to completely ruin the suspense and horror with such a hamfisted bit of satire (assuming of course it isn't NOT trying to be funny but is just so over-the-top it's lame)? Damn you, Polanski.

In conclusion, Rosemary's Baby is a decent entry in the demonic cult/pregnant woman subgenre of horror film, with many technical merits, interesting subtext, and pretty good acting. But what the fuck is up with that climax? I'd give it a 7 or perhaps even an 8 on its own merits, but what the fuck is up with that climax? It buggers description and classification, and as a result I refuse to rate the movie out of principle.