What makes Wanted and Desired riveting is that Zenovich balances this immorality play by interviewing nearly everyone involved and mixes it with perfectly culled archival footage.
Comment
09/12/08
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008)
87 %
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 38
Fresh: 33
Rotten:5
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Theatrical Release: Mar 28, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: In 1977, director Roman Polanski was untouchable. Film such as ROSEMARY'S BABY and CHINATOWN had cemented his reputation, and he staged a successful return to filmmaking following the death of his wife, Sharon Tate, in '69. But his... [More]
Director: Marina Zenovich
DVD Info
Reviews for Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
This chronicle of Polanski's life, career and legal woes offers an engaging portrait of the artist.
08/08/08
Marina Zenovich's documentary is that it fills in a lot of crucial details (including a few new ones), primarily about the rape and its aftermath.
08/01/08
It's the sort of complex story Polanski himself would have excelled at telling, if he weren't busy living it.
08/01/08
Though Marina Zenovich's film deals with the notorious case of the film director who pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old, the film's real subject is the California legal system turned upside down by celebrity and media pressure.
07/25/08
Meticulously crafted and keenly thought out, the film also serves as a useful historical document. It illuminates its time period, delves into moral hypocrisy and shows the evolution of muck-raking celebrity journalism.
07/25/08
With a subject like Roman Polanski, you don't really need to do much to capture audience interest. But maybe that's the reason Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired doesn't live up to its promise.
07/25/08
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a documentary by Marina Zenovich that is also a first-rate work of reportage, makes a forceful case that the whole truth of the matter was never heard in court and Polanski was more sinned against than sinning.
07/25/08
I found myself occasionally enthralled, mainly due to Polanski's haunted presence coming through, even in the form of an absent ghost.
07/25/08
Roman Polanski (The Pianist, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown) is unquestionably a great filmmaker, but as Marina Zenovich's documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired perhaps unintentionally demonstrates, he's also a creep.
07/25/08
Whether you can swallow that or not, the mesmerizing narrative recounts a media circus of unrivaled malignance.
07/25/08
She has achieved extraordinary access to the other still-living players in the case, and they all seem to be in agreement: Polanski is correct in saying the judge played with him as a cat might play with a mouse.
07/25/08
Top Critic The film walks a fine line between contempt for Polanski's crimes and sympathy for his trials and his screwed-up psyche, and it manages both...
07/24/08
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 [Marina] Zenovich has.
07/24/08
The film leans a bit too heavily on the idea that Polanski was a high-living artist who was rejected by a puritanical America and embraced by an understanding Europe, but on balance, the film is a credible re-evaluation of a complex man.
07/23/08
As an anatomy not only of Polanski's psyche but also of the legal system he confronted, it's as baroquely compelling as The Dark Knight.
07/18/08
A clever, contemplative kind of courtroom drama that utilizes the best of Hollywood filmmaking style to tell a story so strange, it must be true.
07/15/08
This is more about the culture of celebrity, the sensationalism, a power hungry, media-hungry judge, and all the things that have happened since then. And as such, it’s a very good documentary.
07/14/08
Top Critic Using tons of footage and new interviews with the victim and key legal figures -- but not the subject himself -- director Marina Zenovich shows how Polanski's darker urges were matched on a moral level by others involved in the case.
07/11/08
Zenovich has made a feature worthy of its eccentric and reckless central figure at his most cynical and embittered.
07/11/08
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