Wanted and desired...I’ll say. I’ve had a “thing” for Polanski ever since, while exploring my depressive, 19th century Thomas Hardy phase, I found Tess of the D’Urbevilles. I was too young to have fully absorbed all the fan fare surrounding Rosemary’s Baby and even Chinatown. I came to those films much later. This is all to say that the character of Roman Polanski has only foggily, and gradually taken shape over time -- as I’ve become a professional scholar and practitioner of filmmaking.

Which of course is why this piece, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired is so timely. So many of us know Polanski, or think we know him, but as the director Marina Zenovich realized in the course of making the documentary, very of us do. This film concentrates on the circumstances of his flight from the United States. I remember this incident as having something to do with his for what I having had sex with an underage girl. I didn’t know her age, or anything else about the case. Turns out that’s not even close to being the whole story.

Zenovich became interested in trying to figure out exactly what would prevent Polanski from returning if he were to win the Academy Award for Best Picture for The Pianist (which he in fact did.) It turned into a difficult question to answer and involved delving into the vagaries and machinations of California criminal court system. What she uncovers is the worst example of the way in which the intoxicating scent of fame and celebrity by association overwhelms even our supposedly most impenetrable and objective institutions. With a combination of luck and persistence, Zenovich was able to convince Polanski’s lawyer Douglas Dalton, to break his silence and appear on film to tell a story of shameful injustice. It’s not that Polanski wasn’t guilty, this film is no apology. Rather the way in which this perpetual outsider was treated give us pause lest we find ourselves facing such a renegade judge. The arguments that my Marxist inspired law school professor made critiquing the inherent objectivity of judicial rulemaking are again affirmed here.

One believes, coming away from this, that Polanski is the kind of extraordinary character whose story will forever fascinate: there are so many horrifying and compelling threads to follow. His escape from extermination during WWII, his emergent genius, his embrace of the swinging London high life, the Tate murder, the Academie Francaise honor. Great success, great tragedy. The film triumphs because it does not exploit, or wallow but fits this one piece of his life into the great narrative epic which is the life of one of the greatest creative visionaries of our time.

Premieres on HBO, June 9, 2008. Opens in theaters in July.

Directed by Marina Zenovich; written by Marina Zenovich, Joe Bini and P.G. Morgan; Director of Photography, Tanja Koop; edited by Joe Bini, music by Mark Degiliantoni; produced by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Lila Yacoub and Marina Zenovich. Released by HBO Documentary Film.

With: Roman Polanski, Douglas Dalton (Polanski’s lawyer), Roger Gunson (Assistant District Attorney), Samantha (Gailey) Geimer (the Victim), Lawrence Silver (Samantha’s attorney), and Judge Laurence J. Rittenband (Judge in the case.)