Mar. 26, 2003. 01:00 AM
Movie gods got it right with Polanski's Oscar
MARTIN KNELMAN
Three days before the 75th presentation of the Academy Awards, a famous director told me over dinner that he was going to chop up his Academy membership card if Martin Scorsese won the Oscar for best director of 2002.
He and I both belong to that community of moviegoers who feel without reservation that The Pianist was by far the best and most emotionally unsettling movie of 2002.
Some of us know that, as long as we live, we will always carry with us the memory of that moment when the protagonist on the run sits down at the piano and plays Chopin for the German officer who has the power to save his life or end it.
And like many industry-watchers who shared our passion for this movie, we were united in our cynical view that neither The Pianist nor its controversial director, Roman Polanski, had the remotest chance of winning the Oscars they so richly deserved.
Indeed, when the nominations were announced in mid-February, I went so far as to write an entire column explaining why Polanski was out of the running. My reasoning, widely shared, went like this: Making the greatest Holocaust movie ever would count for less than the fact that Polanski was a fugitive from American justice, having fled the country rather than face sex-crime charges in a case that goes back a quarter century involving a girl who was 13 at the time.
There was another reason no one thought Polanski could win. The film had a relatively small U.S. distributor without deep pockets and only token commitment to promote the film. And so for a lot of us, it came as a huge, wonderful surprise on Oscar night when, in what was expected to be the final leg of a predictable night, The Pianist suddenly came out of nowhere to grab three major awards — for best adapted screenplay (Ron Harwood), best lead actor (Adrien Brody) and then, almost unbelievably, best director (Polanski).
I don't think I have ever been happier to be proved wrong. (Showbiz journalism rule Number 1: Never get sucked into predicting award results unless you want to wind up looking like a fool.)
Coming at the end of a jittery subdued Oscar ceremony, this triple score made us feel ashamed of doubting the ultimate wisdom and fairness of the Academy. It was one of those moments you wanted to share with others who were delirious about having our cynical expectations confounded.
My friend the famous director would not have to tear up his card after all. The image on the TV screen of Martin Scorsese's fallen face was haunting, but I understood why his defeat was taken by some as a sign that God exists.
Anybody who follows movies and has a brain would acknowledge that Scorsese is one of the most talented directors ever to work in Hollywood, and that he has made movies for which he deserved an Oscar — most notably Taxi Driver (1976).
Gangs Of New York just didn't happen to be one of them. Yet Harvey Weinstein and Miramax Films had so much money and ego riding on Gangs that it couldn't be written off as an ambitious epic that eluded Scorsese's grasp and wound up being an incoherent fizzle instead of a career-capping masterpiece.
Weinstein, who has emerged over the past decade as the auteur of Oscar promotional campaigns, had managed to snare 10 nominations for Gangs despite its decidedly mixed reviews. With Chicago scoring 13 nominations and Michael Caine up for Best Actor in The Quiet American, Miramax had divided loyalties. But during the promotional campaign, it became obvious Weinstein's top priority was to get the Oscar for Scorsese.
So the word went out that even if Scorsese didn't deserve an award for this picture, it was time to give it to him as a lifetime achievement award. Scorsese went on the talk-show circuit in a blatant round of public begging for the award. And Rob Marshall, the director of Chicago, let it be known he would be honoured to lose to Scorsese.
Two weeks before the big night, a scandal broke. A trade-paper ad allegedly by veteran director Robert Wise urged Academy members to vote for Scorsese. It turned out the ad was written by Miramax publicists, not Wise.
Miramax was given a public scolding by Academy president Frank Pierson. Some members who had already sent in ballots asked to have them back so they could change their vote in this category.
Meanwhile, the issue of over-the-top Oscar promotion became as big an issue in Hollywood as the war in Iraq. Miramax reportedly spent more than $100 million pushing its nominees. In an attempt to cap such excess, the Academy has announced that next year the ceremony take place one month earlier, on Feb. 29.
It would have been nice if The Pianist had been chosen best picture of the year, but three big Oscars counts as a miracle. Especially since a lot of people don't really like Roman Polanski, and his distributor spent a paltry $2 million pushing the film for Oscars, and Polanski was not here having lunch at The Grill, pressing the flesh and doing the talk-show circuit.
All he did was make one of the greatest movies of our time. Almost unbelievably, this time that was enough to win.
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