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Roman Polanski
Is it possible to feel sympathy towards him? I cannot have any for what he did in 1977 as that was wrong and he should have faced the music.
Before that though his unborn son and wife were brutally murdered by a group of maniacs. He was very lucky to survive the Holocaust,his Mother was killed by the Nazi's
He makes for an interesting example of someone who has had the most dreadful things happen to. Things that you think "my god I feel so sorry for this guy". Then he goes and does something which is beyond the realm of decency and runs away from it. He is then seen as "A monster who took advantage of a child".
So people would find it hard to have any sympathy towards him.
Before that though his unborn son and wife were brutally murdered by a group of maniacs. He was very lucky to survive the Holocaust,his Mother was killed by the Nazi's
He makes for an interesting example of someone who has had the most dreadful things happen to. Things that you think "my god I feel so sorry for this guy". Then he goes and does something which is beyond the realm of decency and runs away from it. He is then seen as "A monster who took advantage of a child".
So people would find it hard to have any sympathy towards him.
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I'm not sure the brutal death of a loved one and baby justifies drugging, sodomising and raping a child.
Nor does it justify doing everything you can to avoid taking responsibility for your crime.
Not saying justifying it just thinking can you with the knowledge we now have of him have sympathy for him loosing his wife and son in that way. I can but I also think he should have faced up to what he did and served time.
Yes, of course one can have sympathy for him as far as Sharon Tate's murder is concerned, and for his experiences during the war and the loss of his mother, but that doesn't excuse what he did to that young girl.
He didn't serve a day in jail for what he did and he's spent 40 years running away from the crime. In that case, he's an unadulterated coward as well as an unconvicted paedophile.
This. The OP reminds me of those pathetic little women who write love letters to serial killers in prison. :rolleyes:
I don't give a damn about the pain he went through beforehand. It doesn't give a person a free pass to rape kids.
There have been numerous Polanski threads here and they go round in circles. I believe the victim has said it's time to move on, presumably not wanting a trial where the paparazzi would be outside her house for months.
You cannot move on without acknowledgement of what you did wrong.
What he did was very, very wrong.
Yeah, but there is no ending, the reality is the only way he would go back to the USA is if there was a plea bargain so he got a slap on the wrist and that's highly unlikely.
I was amazed he got the best director Oscar.
I think it is totally possible to have sympathy for him regarding what happened to his mum, wife and unborn child (truly awful acts of extreme violence against innocent people) whilst finding what he subsequently did to a 13 year old child abhorrent.
His past would screw up anyone mentally but still no excuse for what he then did. You can only rape a 13 year old if you find sex with children attractive and that makes you a paedophile. I would struggle with the idea that what happened to his family caused his paedophilia. More likely that this was always in him and would have manifested anyway even if his mum had survived the Nazis and his wife and child had not been targeted by Manson. You would think that someone who had experienced the effects of abusive acts would of have done everything in their power to avoid abusing an innocent person themselves, if it was within their power.
Nothing of the sort. I do not agree with him running away from what he did. He should have been jailed years ago, however I can have sympathy for what happened to him before he commited the act.
Similar to The Bulger killers I have sympathy for their early years but then they commited that disgusting act and from that point I could not care less about them. However I do not think that people saying "well X should have been killed as a child".
As then we are into Baby P area, we do not know what he may or may not have done should he have survived.
What sickens me as well is how Hollywood stands up for him! He raped a child!
He should of years ago before all this happened anyway. It was just another Oscar making up for being overlooked.
Bit harsh towards the OP. They never said they were going to write a love letter to him, just wondering if people could have sympathy for him which obviously those in hollywood do. I understand the question, surviving the Holocaust and having your wife and unborn child killed is devastating and if he had committed a 'lesser' sort of crime (not all crime!) I probably would have sympathy for him.
Surprised that you had not heard about what Charlie Manson had done thought that was well known.
I'm inclined to think that the vote was split three ways between Polanski, Martin Scorsese and Rob Marshall that year, and Polanski just happened to come out on top. I certainly can't see the Academy members consciously deciding en masse to give him the award, considering he wouldn't actually be able to collect it.
As for the main discussion, well, the simplest answer unfortunately is that there ISN'T a simple answer to the whole Polanski thing. Unless he ever makes a film openly advocating paedophilia, his artistic talent, his troubled past and his criminal actions are things that all exist independently of one another, and none of them automatically cancels out the other(s). Yeah, it'd be simpler if we could just plug all three events into some mathematical equation and decide whether or not we should respect him, but that's not the way the world works. He committed a horrible crime, which shouldn't be swept under the rug, but at the same time I don't think that should automatically taint everything he's ever done.
It doesn't matter if these tragedies happened prior to him molesting a child, he was a paedophile even then. I feel sorry for his family but not him. He is evil. Evil can't love, so I gather he probably didn't care about his wife and mother anyway.
And I condemn any actor who works with him.
Yes which is why I said I don't feel sympathy for him.
Potentially too young, I had heard something of Charles Mason previously, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you who he killed or that it was related to anyone famous.
Yes, I know but the OP does which I find deeply disturbing.
Good post. I feel the same way. I like Polanski as a filmmaker and have no problems with any actor who works with him. Same with Woody Allen. But I find them both very questionable in their 'off-screen' lives.
Unfortunately I find it hard to separate his work and his personal life mostly because he intentionally ran away from it and has yet to pay for his crimes.
I do think I think a little less of actors who work with him because he ran away. They seem to justify this somehow. I just don't think I could work with someone who did something like that because I have no respect for them.
It's like a slap in the face to the victim and their family that Hollywood seem to be so blasé about it.
This.
I will say I watch his films but I have to seperate the art from the person that made it. Which is hard to do, but I do the same when it comes to Michael Jackson and others who are undesirable as people but gifted at their talent.
That's very black and white. Emotions aren't black and white, the psychology of the human mind is much more complex than that.
It's possible that he was a latent paedophile who would never have acted on it but the tragedies he experienced in life changed him so that he cared less about the consequences of acting on it. That's only a suggestion of how things can be complicated, and still wouldn't excuse what he did.
It's also possible that he loved his mother, wife and child deeply but still had paedophilic tendencies. People aren't all good or all bad. Notorious criminals do lead happy and normal family lives, look at Harold Shipman, seemingly a loving father and husband for years but still bumping off patients left right and centre.
None of this means you have to feel sorry for him for the bad things that happened to him earlier but it's too simplistic to say that he was evil therefore he couldn't love anyone at all.