‘Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired’ ****
All Roman Polanski has to do is show up on-screen, as he did playing a French policeman in “Rush Hour 3,” and he brings with him a world of weaselly self-amusement and criminally loose morals. That’s his reputation. And that reputation, along with the knowable facts of what he did to 13-year-old Samantha Gailey Geimer in Jack Nicholson’s house after photographing the underage Hollywood hopeful topless in a hot tub, is the heart of Marina Zenovich’s remarkable documentary “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.”
Having already aired on HBO, the film — one of the best of the year — now makes its way into limited theatrical release. Zenovich doesn’t settle for a single cliche or generalization or facile set of judgments regarding what Polanski did in 1977, why he fled America in 1978 never to return and the endlessly debated particulars of the crime he committed (he pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor).
What’s amazing here is the wider panorama of Hollywood society and mores. The judge presiding over the Polanski case was Laurence J. Rittenband, celebrity-obsessed and hilariously conscious of his place in the show-business sun. Now retired, prosecutor Roger Gunson and defense attorney Douglas Dalton guide us through the labyrinth of the case. Zenovich relies (a touch obviously) on clips from Polanski’s work, from “Knife in the Water” to “Rosemary’s Baby” to “Chinatown,” along with a fascinating allegorical snippet from a short film “The Fat and the Lean” (1961), made before he became the toast of swinging London, before he became the husband of Sharon Tate, before Tate’s grisly murder at the hands of the Charles Manson cultists.
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On camera, Geimer — now a 45-year-old mother of three — offers her guarded side of the story, with more empathy for Polanski than you’d expect. Is she telling the whole truth? Could anyone entirely bury her anger about the media circus she had to endure all those years ago? This is a superb picture, sharp, open-minded, wised-up and cinematically accomplished. I wonder if any man could’ve handled the Polanski enigma with the same ironic intelligence Zenovich has.
Running time: 1:39. Opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre.
MPAA rating: Not rated (parents cautioned for sexuality and language)
— Michael Phillips
‘My Father My Lord’ *** 1/2
Portent, metaphor and a sense of doom all hang so heavily over “My Father My Lord” that it’s a wonder the film can breathe. If first-time writer-director David Volach were any less affectionate toward his subjects, or any less adept with his intimate, personal compositions, his film might well be an excruciating miserablist drama, as well as a scathing condemnation of the religion and community in which he was raised. As it is, “My Father” isn’t entirely kind toward Israel’s strict, orthodox Haredi subculture, but it’s a well-observed insider’s story, one told with as much compassion as implied critique.
Volach spends long, minimalist minutes simply observing Rabbi Abraham Edelman as he prays, reads and tutors his young son Menachem in Haredi ritual. His shots of Menachem exploring the world around him are captured with a similar quiet, naturalistic devotion, as though Volach was observing animals for a wildlife documentary.
Abraham is a deeply loving father to his only child, but he’s a distant one as well, relating to his family and his world largely in terms of tradition. When he encounters a nesting dove at Menachem’s school and shoos it away from its chicks in accordance with a passage in the Torah that even he doesn’t fully understand, he gravely offers the moment as a teaching tool for his son, but it falls to his more nurturing wife Esther to assure Menachem that the chicks will be OK.
Ultimately, Abraham’s consuming devotion to daily ritualistic demands brings tragedy on the family. But much of the pain comes from a lecture he gives his students midway through the film, explaining how God reserves “personal providence” for righteous Jews who follow Scripture. By declaring God’s personal, direct interest in the lives of men such as himself, he unwittingly implies God’s tacit involvement in the horror that finds his family.
Rabbi Abraham’s story parallels the biblical story of Abraham, asked to sacrifice his son Isaac to God; Volach even pointedly inserts the story into Menachem’s school lessons. When the boy tries to help build a diorama of the story and can’t get God’s alternative sacrifice to cooperate, it’s yet another moment of symbolic foreboding.
It’s necessary for Volach to imbue even such small moments with metaphorical meaning, because the film never reaches for a larger scale. Instead, Volach makes every moment count by holding tight close-ups on the faces of his extraordinarily tender, expressive cast, framing them with an elegant beauty.
Running time: 1:14. Opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre.
No MPAA rating.
— Tasha Robinson
‘Praying With Lior’ ***
Rabbi Devora Bartnoff died in 1997, when her son Lior, who was born with Down syndrome, was 6. A few months earlier, while fighting breast cancer, she had written an article for the Jewish Exponent about Lior’s love of davening — or praying — his anticipation every week of Sabbath services, the hugs he bestowed on the Torah and on members of the congregation.
“Praying With Lior” shares the article’s title and its subject. Filmmaker Ilana Trachtman follows the Liebling family — Lior; father Mordechai, also a rabbi; stepmother Lynne; and siblings Reena, Yoni and Anna — as they prepare for Lior’s bar mitzvah, something his mother had tried to imagine in her essay.
Trachtman’s cameras follow Lior from home to synagogue to Orthodox day school, where his filter-free emotions and off-kilter sense of humor (he’s a master of “April Fools’,” no matter the date) win him admiration, love and, from his classmates, tolerance. (Says one classmate of Lior’s davening: “It counts double.”) Home movies help fill in the blanks left by Devora’s death.
Some see him as a religious savant, a “little rebbe,” but as he prepares for his big day with his father, it’s obvious that his religious revelations are not of an intellectual variety but come from the heart. When asked what he expects on the day of his bar mitzvah, he confidently predicts the coming of the Messiah and his mother’s spirit. “I really want my mom to come back,” he says.
Trachtman doesn’t downplay the challenges of a family with a Down syndrome child, even one as high-functioning as Lior. His younger sister, Anna, complains that Lior gets all the attention, and Yoni snaps at his dad about having to do more than his share of parenting his brother. And there’s a feeling of unease watching Lynne attempt to fill some pretty big shoes.
Trachtman says she made the film to illustrate the plight of disabled Americans who must contend with houses of worship that lack handicapped access, but her documentary itself isn’t always so sensitive. Trachtman’s questions for Lior can be annoying (right before the bar mitzvah, she keeps asking him whether he’s nervous, so much so that the viewer gets the yips). And Mordechai and Lior take a trip to Devora’s grave that borders on exploitive, especially when both begin sobbing while Lior hugs her headstone.
But those are small quibbles compared with the film’s climax, when the bar mitzvah boy comes through. It’s hard to have dry eyes as at least part of Lior’s wishes for that day seem to come true.
Running time: 1:27. Plays Fri.-Thu. at Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave., 773-281-4114.
No MPAA rating; for general audiences.
— Maureen M. Hart
‘A Jihad for Love’ ** 1/2
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“A Jihad for Love” is a problematic and, in some ways, flawed documentary, but one on a gripping topic: pious gay Muslims grappling with religious strictures as well as political oppression in various countries.
The movie looks at a handful of gay men and women who remain devoted to their religion but struggle with its condemnation of their lifestyle, at least as interpreted by numerous Muslim scholars. Some of their stories involve not just spiritual conflict but legal peril. There’s the saga of a group of Iranian men, for instance, who flee their homeland and relocate to Turkey, where they risk deportation back. The subjects also include gays who live in countries where they’re tolerated, but where they nevertheless agonize personally as they try to reconcile sexuality and cherished beliefs: Paris, Johannesburg and Istanbul, for instance.
They span a broad spectrum, from transvestites camping it up in classic garb in India to an Egyptian arrested and jailed for going to a gay night spot. But Parvez Sharma’s documentary boasts so many examples and locales that it often sails by as a quick take on a topic begging for more depth. Most of the interviewees are sketched only briefly, so that, despite the compelling subject matter, few of these individuals are explored with enough depth.
Another problem is an insurmountable one that isn’t Sharma’s fault. For various reasons, many of the subjects are interviewed with their faces blurred or hidden, understandably preserving anonymity but maintaining a distance that’s unfortunate. For visual variety, Sharma is forced to pad the film with street scenes of various cities and villages, rendering the film often bland and impersonal visually.
Somewhat compensating for all that is the film’s ongoing look at the Iranians, who, when they arrive in Canada, find bittersweet solace in their longed-for freedom and weep in both gratitude and pain at the suffering they know will be endured by so many gays left behind. Their powerful emotion is a grim reminder that the gay struggle in some settings is not just sad, it’s treacherous.
Running time: 1:21. Opens Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Director Sharma will appear at the 8 p.m. Fri., 8:15 p.m. Sat. and 5 p.m. Sun. screenings. Producer Sandi Dubowski will appear at the 5 p.m. Sun. and 8 p.m. Mon. screenings.
No MPAA rating: contains adult subject matter.
— Sid Smith