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Thursday, February 13, 2014

Why I Boycotted Martin Scorsese


“And as I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.”
Martin Scorsese 

Martin Scorsese is not a very imposing man at 5’ 4” but few will deny the towering influence he has had on global cinema since the early 1970’s. In fact I doubt that there is anyone in the world over the age of thirty who has not seen or heard of a Scorsese film. Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and most recently The Wolf of Wall Street, to name just a few of the phenomenal movies and enduring movie characters he has created over the years. 

The biggest movie stars in the world line up to be cast in one of his movies, new directors would kill to have made one movie from his long resume, in their entire career, and moviegoers flock to his latest creation in droves. Apart from the films he has directed, he has also produced countless classics and served as mentor and inspiration for a few generations of filmmakers. 

Being a movie fanatic myself, he has long been a hero of mine. No matter the subject matter or the cast, I used to be one of the faithful who would gladly pay to watch the next Scorsese film with blind devotion.

This is a man whose every film I would run out to be the first to see; a man for whom I had a great deal of respect. A man whose pain I personally felt, each time he was cheated out of a Best Director Oscar; amazingly he has still won ONLY one Oscar for The Departed in 2006; but I digress. The point is that in an industry filled with shallow, self-absorbed and feckless people, this was a man I admired for being the opposite. 

He is someone I believed held values and principles that were made of sterner stuff in the midst of an often morally bankrupt profession. This was a man who in my mind had not drunk the Hollywood Kool Aid of self-importance. Instead of using his fame to preach to us, off the camera, he spoke purely through his art; staying true to his vision and not succumbing to chasing the box office numbers and studio-driven bottom-lines. 

To be clear, I am not comparing him to Gandhi or Mandela but within Hollywood he was someone who stood out from the rest of the big studio sell-out pack, with his humble, gentle and self-effacing demeanor. Why then you might ask did I take this drastic step and boycott a genius and someone whom I clearly held in such high regard?

In September 2009, Roman Polanski was detained on a U.S. arrest warrant related to a 1977 child sex charge while trying to enter Switzerland. He was on his way to attend the Zurich Film Festival, where he was to be honoured. Polanski has been on the run since 1978. 

He was 43 years old when he pled guilty “to a single count of having unlawful intercourse with a minor acknowledging he had sex with a 13-year-old girl.” It seems there “have been repeated attempts to settle the case over the years, but the sticking point has always been Polanski's refusal to return to attend hearings. Prosecutors have consistently argued that it would be a miscarriage of justice to allow a man to go free who "drugged and raped a 13-year-old child." (Source: CNNarticle). I would be inclined to agree with the authorities. 

Mr. Polanski not only committed a crime but actually admitted to it. After he was arrested a section of the Hollywood community led by Harvey Weinstein started a petition to ‘FREE POLANSKI’ because they claimed "it seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him" (Source: ONTD article). The petition called on every filmmaker we can to help fix this terrible situation," (Source: CNNarticle). Martin Scorsese was one of the signatories to this petition.

Let’s begin by stating the obvious; it seems to me that these petitioners are suggesting that due to Mr. Polanski’s greatness as a filmmaker and based on his tremendous contribution to the arts, he should somehow be forgiven for raping a 13 year old girl; or worse that perhaps the laws of the land that apply to the rest of us mere mortals do not apply to Hollywood greatness. It would be one thing to request that the authorities arrest him after the function (personally, I don’t believe a child rapist should be afforded even that courtesy) but to suggest that he not only not be arrested but that he be allowed to remain a free man, is abhorrent and an insult to the rights of women and every daughter, sister, wife and mother. Also, I am aware that the girl he raped famously forgave him in 1997 and requested that the charges against him be dropped; she did so to find closure and move on with her life. Irrespective, her forgiving him should change nothing. Mr. Polanski committed a serious crime and must face the consequences for his actions. It is for the Judge and jury to weigh the victim’s forgiveness when Mr. Polanski faces them in a court of law. If we start to determine criminality and sentencing based purely on a victim’s forgiveness of the perpetrator, we may as well do away with the criminal justice system.

It honestly does not matter to me that there were other famous Hollywood personalities like Woody Allen, Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson and Jonathan Demme who also signed the same petition. But it troubled me deeply that Mr. Scorsese did. Perhaps, naively so, but I had never equated him with the rest of this industry and had held him to a higher standard. His signature and support to free a confessed child rapist felt like a personal betrayal and I chose to show my indignation by boycotting his movies from that day.