Much about the 2003 ceremony has aged poorly — or worse. Two decades on, we break down a night that portended a Hollywood reckoning to come.
, Justin, I labeled that campaign season “the absolute worst” and wrote that its “vicious backbiting has not been equaled.” This year, we have the sequel, a sadder and even more sordid season dominated by Weinstein’s obsession with getting Scorsese an Oscar and the ultimate victory for Polanski, a man who, according to that 13-year girl’s testimony, drugged and raped her. He then fled the country, fearful that he’d have to serve additional time beyond the 42 days he had already spent in jail.
, that “whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time.” And, with “The Pianist,” Polanski had just made this shocking, authoritative movie about a Polish Jew surviving the Warsaw Ghetto, guided by his own unflinching memories of enduring the Krakow Ghetto as a child. Should you separate the artist from the art? Some Oscar voters, enough Oscar voters, believed that you should. But that opinion was far from universal.
But then, Scorsese did too, turning up at countless events concocted by Weinstein and his campaigners to put him in front of voters. I caught up with Scorsese for a long interview about a month before the Oscars. He sounded tired and ready for the whole thing to be over.
Separate the art from the artist? We’re not going to settle that debate here, Glenn, but I will note that to try and separate the two would deny the haunting power of “The Pianist” itself. This could be Polanski’s most personal film, a stealth cine-memoir in which his Holocaust survival story merges with that of his real-life subject, the Polish classical pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman.
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