Should great artists be treated differently from ordinary mortals? Does a musician, painter, writer or filmmaker who creates soul-stirring and sublime works deserve a free pass, special dispensation, a get-out-of-jail card, so to speak?
I raise these questions in regard to Roman Polanski, the French-Polish director who soon may be extradited back to Los Angeles to face the consequences of a crime he committed in 1977, then fled from -- but not in connection to his sordid legal situation.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, October 06, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 36 words Type of Material: Correction
Roman Polanski: A caption with an article about director Roman Polanski in Monday's Calendar section said that the photo showed Polanski and actor Adrien Brody on the set of "The Piano." The film was "The Pianist."
Rather, these are questions that Polanski addresses himself in "The Pianist,"(2002_film) his 2002 film about the brilliant Jewish-Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman. Through a combination of his own intelligence and animal guile, and other people's (mainly) good intentions, Szpilman somehow was able to survive the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II(1939) while millions around him perished.
"The Pianist" is a haunting drama that won Polanski the Oscar for best director. It may be the most emphatic and comprehensive statement on the human condition from a director whose career has generated "Knife in the Water" (1962), "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), "Chinatown" (1974) and "The Tenant" (1976).
So what is "The Pianist" saying about moral behavior, and the role of the artist in society? And what, if anything, can be inferred from it about the moral vision of the complex, controversial man who directed it?
Polanski's vision of the ethical laws governing the universe is anything but reassuring. In his movies, justice and logic ultimately have little to do with an individual's fate. Crime and punishment are dished out more or less arbitrarily. Survival is fluky, freakish and often paid for with drastic moral compromises.
His sensibility unmistakably stamps Polanski as a postwar European auteur, heir to the existential musings of Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as he has acknowledged. His absurdist view of existence, combined with his meticulous sense of craft, renders his movies cold to the touch, not warm and fuzzy, in the preferred Hollywood manner.
The key elements of Polanski's personal narrative hardly need repeating. But in sum they remain shocking and disturbing: his youthful escape from the Krakow ghetto while his parents were sent to Nazi extermination camps (only his father survived); the sadistic murder of his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, by members of the Manson gang in 1969; and his conviction for having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, the case for which he is still a wanted man in Los Angeles.
