Marina Zenovich’s long-in-production documentary “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” took a well-deserved jury prize at Sundance 2008 for editor-co-writer Joe Bini. The assembled have done a smashing job with archival footage and latter-day interviews to describe a lost era only three decades past; a troubled life that parallels terrible things of the twentieth century; and a terrible crime—the rape of a 13-year-old child while after the administering of drugs—compounded by layers and layers of misconduct by the prosecution (and persecution) of a publicity-hungry judge. The documentary, debuted on HBO, is straightforward and not at all apologetic: Polanski pled guilty to charges of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. His victim appears as an adult who abhors the way both she and Polanski were treated by the California court system of the 1970s, and the underlying message is less one about libertinism and privilege than of the simple question of whether justice is served when even the semblance of taint, let alone full-on corruption, is allowed to enter. The answer: a calm, quiet, affirmative “No.” (Ray Pride)
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