“A judge’s greedy powertrip” We all know director Roman Polanski as that guy whose wife was murdered by the Manson Family, a brilliant artist with films such as Chinatown, and a statutory rapist who fled the country and never returned. Amidst the controversial win of Best Director for The Pianist in 2002, I finally discovered the hoopla of it all; how he was given permission from a 13 year old’s mother to take photographs and how she knew what kind of life he lived yet did what she could to…
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REVIEW: Death and the Maiden [1994]
“A midnight knock at the door” Roman Polanski has always appeared to me as director who utilizes large casts and set pieces. Not quite a crafter of epics, but big pictures nonetheless. Sure his first film, Knife in the Water, was on a small scale—it was his debut. I was thinking more of The Ninth Gate, The Pianist, and Oliver Twist. Interestingly, right before that trio of large productions, he brought us Death and the Maiden, an Ariel Dorfman play using only three characters to tell its story of revenge,…
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