It does look as though Roman Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy” will be causing a major stir at the Venice Film Festival, and it’s not like Venice head Alberto Barbera has tried to calm any of the controversy.
Many have decided to play, side-by-side, the fact that Polanski’s “An Officer and A Spy” is playing in competition and that only two female-directed films will be part of the main competition. Polanski, was recently expelled by the Academy because of his conviction in 1977 of statutory rape. “1 rapist. 2 women directors in competition….What else am I missing?” tweeted Melissa Silverstein, founder of the organization Women and Hollywood. Yikes.
Barbera talked to Variety and compared the new Polanski to 2002’s excellent “The Pianist”. Barbera also defended Polanski’s inclusion, by saying that “An Officer and A Spy” shows the director “at the top of his game. He is one of the last great masters of European cinema, and he’s more than 80. At his age, he’s able to make a film that is an extraordinary reconstruction of a historical event.”
“An Officer and a Spy” is about Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish solider wrongly accused of spying for the Germans in Paris in the 1890s. The film is set to have many parallels to today’s world, the least of which is Polanski’s personal life, as Dreyfus was a victim of smear-campaigning and had his life ruined by the untruthful allegations. A timely topic, to say the least.
This could turn out to be a much-talked about event of the movie world, as Polanski has been, by all accounts, blacklisted in Hollywood due to decade-old allegations of sexual misconduct resurfacing in the #MeToo era. Barbera is surely making a statement by having Polanski world premiering his latest at the 76th edition of the festival, which is set to take place August 28th to September 9th
I wouldn't call this film great — it stops short of that because of how neatly it resolves itself — but I'll give Rock his due here: this is much better than his previous directorial effort, "Top Five."