J'accuse

I really loved this movie about an interesting story, well told by Polanski. There is an accurate research and a very good cinematographic transposition of what happened in France with the Affair Dreyfus, that many people still don't know. It is important to talk about it, especially with this pathos and care of the details. Definitely a movie to see.

An Officer and a Spy comes out and reminds us that Roman Polanski is a master of cinema. Not objectionable. Leaning again on the writer Robert Harris, he curates the painting, composition, faces and atmosphere, and chisels a warning about that and this France, Europe, the world: anti-Semitism, of course, the friability of justice and the perniciousness of the system, of course, but also personal punishment and individual responsibility. His approach, compared to the Dreyfus case, is thriller: another man in the shadows, at least in the widespread recognition of History (we are talking about Piquart, more than Dreyfus), and other plots to be foiled, step by step, hearing and cell after cell. Other, with extreme dedication to the truth of the facts, the historical truth.

Of the captain of Jewish origin Alfred Dreyfus - embodied by Louis Garrel - accused in 1894 of having passed military information to the Germans and sentenced to life imprisonment on the island of the Devil, Polanski decrypts the systemic lie concocted against him: non-existent and artificial evidence, rising anti-Semitism; illuminates the "cure", since a public letter to the President of the Republic, the writer Èmile Zola, took a stand on the affair with the famous J'accuse, but following Harris's escort he follows the story from the perspective of officer George Piquart (Jean Dujardin), who as the new head of counterintelligence investigates the flow of information to the Germans. No, after Dreyfus's arrest he did not stop.

Co-produced with France by Italy, Luca Barbareschi and Rai Cinema, J'accuse praises (doing one's own) duty, ridicules the pompous and fatuous high offices, the corral and current subordinates, disrupts the gear of power , the institutionalized homo homini lupus, and opens to residual hope: it is up to man, indeed, to a man to know why he can no longer be ignored, discover why he can no longer annihilate, free himself so that he can no longer unjustly punish.

Dujardin has calm, elegance and probity, Garrel is perfect, Polanski can also count on his wife Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric and Denis Podalydès, and the film greatly benefits from them: thriller by genre, human comedy for profit, political treatise by analysis, great cinema by images. Polanski does not give himself airs, except those of Alexandre Desplat, he does not strut, he only makes us see better: the long focal lengths of history, our here and now. Whoever forgets is an accomplice, indeed, an executioner.

More than 120 years after the events, the Dreyfus case seems to never die. The story of the Jewish officer wrongfully convicted of espionage on the basis of false accusations is reminded every time the honesty, integrity or patriotism of the Jews who choose to live in the Diaspora are questioned. The anti-Semitic slogans propagated by the anti-Dreyfus press and chanted by the angry crowds then are reminded whenever the conspiracy theories bring the Jews to the center of current events. It is not forgotten that one of the side effects of the Dreyfus case was the emergence of the Zionist movement in Europe, which led half a century later to the founding of the State of Israel. Finally, France, the country of democracy and humanism, continues to keep the Dreyfus case as one of its defining moments, a historical warning about the dangers of prejudice and hatred towards strangers that can haunt the most enlightened society. Roman Polanski's 'J'Accuse' is a the latest film tin a series of cinematographic creations that have kept alive the memory and the interest for that moment which refuses to be buried in the oblivion of history.

The main hero of this version is not Dreyfus (played by Louis Garrel) who is little on screen and permanently in the background of the action, but is otherwise presented rather schematically and not in the most positive light. In the center of attention is Georges Picquart (played by Jean Dujardin), the officer who brought to public notice the anti-Semitic conspiracy and the judicial framing that led to Dreyfus's first conviction. His actions and his fight against public opinion, his superiors and a good part of the French political class saved the honor of France and of the army to which he and Dreyfus had dedicated their lives and careers. Far from being a schematic character, Picquart is represented as a complex man of his period, brave and idealistic on one hand, but not without prejudices and personal problems on the other. The titles of the film inform us that the related facts happened in reality, but we must still bear in mind that this is a version of the story based on a novel. Robert Harris's and Roman Polanski's version of the Dreyfus case.

Jean Dujardin's acting seemed exceptional to me. This actor continues to amaze me with each of his new films through the combination of talent and immersion in the roles he plays, with his charisma and personal charm. Of the rest of the distribution I especially notice Mathieu Amalric , another of my favorites. The editing is well filmed, the story runs flawlesly, in the style of classical cinema. It looks like Polanski wanted to make a sober film, in which the emotion derives from the actions of the characters. If we chose to put aside all the disputes regarding the person and the director's past, what we see on screen is a historical film about a crucial moment in the history of France and Europe, made and acted with respect and professionalism.

Not a single f-word, no sexual scene and a brilliant movie. Hollywood doesn't know to do that anymore.

It's an absolute masterclass in how to make an historical film.

This subject has something very real and urgent to say about the world we live in today. It's kind of a shame you'll probably never get to see it.