Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
You didn't think courthouse media circuses were invented in the 1990s, with the O.J. Simpson trial, did you? A new HBO documentary reminds us of the long, unhappy intercourse between the tabloid-minded media and the justice system by dissecting the case of director Roman Polanski, who pled guilty to charges of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
Called "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," and smartly directed by Marina Zenovich, the movie is not exactly an attempt to exonerate Polanski, who fled the United States to France in 1978 after his conviction. Instead, it operates like a well-researched procedural film about how the trial was mishandled, relying heavily on frank interviews with those who were behind the closed doors as the case unfolded. The movie, tonight at 9, doesn't casually let Polanski off the hook for his behavior, so much as it expands our understanding of the facts surrounding his ultimate decision to leave town.
The cast in the film includes Polanski's now-retired defense attorney, Douglas Dalton, and Dalton's now-retired counterpart in the trial, Santa Monica Assistant District Attorney Roger Gunson, as well as Polanski's victim, Samantha Geimer, 45, who says that Polanski did not get a fair trial. The only major figure who does not talk is Superior Court Judge Laurence Rittenband, who died in 1994. As the movie breaks down the proceedings, it becomes increasingly clear that Rittenband did not successful maintain his integrity or his objectivity. A judge who apparently enjoyed his role in celebrity cases involving Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, and Cary Grant, he engaged both attorneys in the Polanski case in deceptions, he played to the media in a press conference, and he allowed public perception to affect his decision-making.
Early in "Wanted and Desired," in an old clip, we see the director saying to Mike Wallace, "I think I was very unfortunate to have a judge who misused justice." It sounds like a defensive claim, but by the end of the documentary, it seems on the mark.
Zenovich doesn't go overboard in trying to psychoanalyze Polanski, whose life has been a series of personal tragedies and artistic triumphs. There are sequences about how his childhood was destroyed by the Nazis, who put both of his parents in concentration camps, and there is some heartbreaking footage regarding the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, in 1969, and his resulting devastation. But I never felt manipulated into sympathy, so much as drawn into a greater understanding of Polanski's unusual, impish manner and the depth of his wounds. When you see the way he is mobbed and accused after his wife's murder, with intimate footage that throws you right into the anarchy of cameras and microphones, you can't help but gain a firmer grasp of the intensity of fear and mistrust.
If you go into "Wanted and Desired" with preconceptions, prepare to feel them challenged and altered, even if they are ultimately confirmed. The facts speak loudly.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.
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