J'accuse (2019) / An Officer and a Spy

Roman Polanski: J'accuse (2019) with Jean Dujardin (Picquart) and Louis Garrel (Dreyfus).

 

Roman Polanski: J'accuse (2019). Émile Zola published his open letter "J'accuse... " on 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore. This act meant also the birth of the intellectual.

Roman Polanski: J'accuse (2019). In court: Fernand Labori (Melvin Poupaud) and Émile Zola (André Marcon).

Roman Polanski: J'accuse (2019). Emmanuelle Seigner as Pauline Monnier.

L'ufficiale e la spia / Upseeri ja vakooja / En officer och spion.
    FR/IT 2019. PC: Légende Films / RP Productions. P: Ilan Goldman.
    D: Roman Polanski. SC: Robert Harris, Roman Polanski – based on the novel An Officer and a Spy (2013) by Robert Harris. Cin: Pawel Edelman – colour – 1,85:1 – release: DCP. PD: Jean Rabasse. AD: Dominique Moisan. Set dec: Philippe Cord'homme, Jessy Kupperman. Cost: Pascaline Chavanne. Makeup: Vesna Peborde. SFX: Yves Domenjoud. VFX: Michel Denis. M: Alexandre Desplat. Soundtrack: "Le Cygne" by Camille Saint-Saëns played on the piano by Jean Dujardin. S: Lucien Balibar. ED: Hervé de Luze.
Distribution (Wikipédia: most of the characters have Wikipedia pages of their own):
    Jean Dujardin : lieutenant-colonel Marie-Georges Picquart
    Louis Garrel : capitaine Alfred Dreyfus
    Emmanuelle Seigner : Pauline Monnier
    Grégory Gadebois : commandant Hubert Henry
    Hervé Pierre : général Charles-Arthur Gonse
    Wladimir Yordanoff : général Auguste Mercier
    Didier Sandre : général Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre
    Melvil Poupaud : Me Fernand Labori, avocat d'Émile Zola au civil, puis du capitaine Dreyfus devant le 2e conseil de guerre
    Éric Ruf : colonel Jean Sandherr
    Mathieu Amalric : Alphonse Bertillon, expert graphologue
    Laurent Stocker : général Georges-Gabriel de Pellieux
    Vincent Perez : Me Louis Leblois, ami de jeunesse du lieutenant-colonel Picquart
    Michel Vuillermoz : lieutenant-colonel Armand du Paty de Clam
    Vincent Grass : général Jean-Baptiste Billot
    Denis Podalydès : Me Edgar Demange, avocat du capitaine Dreyfus devant les 1er et 2e conseils de guerre
    Damien Bonnard : Desvernine
    Laurent Natrella : commandant Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy
    Kevin Garnichat : Capitaine Jules Lauth
    Bruno Raffaelli : juge Delegorgue
    Vincent de Bouard : Gribelin
    Stefan Godin : général Darras (crédité Stéfan Godin)
    Pierre Poirot : greffier Vallecalle
    Luca Barbareschi : Philippe Monnier
    Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina : Bachir
    Philippe Magnan : procureur Brisset, président du 1er conseil de guerre
    Pierre Forest : le colonel Morel
    Jeanne Rosa : Martha Leblois
    Benoît Allemane : Georges Charpentier, éditeur d'Émile Zola
    Gérard Chaillou : Georges Clemenceau, éditorialiste à L'Aurore
    André Marcon : Émile Zola
    Nicolas Bridet : Mathieu Dreyfus
    Swan Starosta : Lucie Dreyfus
    Luce Mouchel : Madame Sandherr
    Nicolas Wanczycki : Foucault
    Pierre Aussedat : Colonel arrestation Picquart
    Jean-Marie Frin : Président du jury
    Jean-Marie Lecoq : Médecin duel
    Thierry Gimenez : Colonel Jouaust
    Frédéric Épaud : Officier artillerie
    Clément Jacqmin : Journaliste Santé
    Fabrice Firmin : Alexandre Perrenx
    Roman Polanski : un académicien (non crédité)
Loc: Paris, Finistère, Moret-sur-Loing, Beynes, Essonne, Ecuelles. 26 Nov 2018 – 7 March 2019.
132 min
Festival premiere: 30 Aug 2019 Venice Film Festival
French premiere: 13 Nov 2019.
Finnish premiere: 24 July 2020, distributed by Future Film with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Janne Kauppila and Michaela Palmberg & tbc [the credits flashed by too fast].
Viewed at Kinopalatsi 3, Helsinki, 17 Aug 2020.

AA: J'accuse (2019) is a sober and powerful drama about the Dreyfus affair that shook France and the world from 1894 until 1906. The affair was one of the most devastating instances of a miscarriage of justice in history. The drama is also a tale of a corrupt network of power that reached to the top of society.

This tale of persecution and injustice could be a figment of Kafkaesque imagination, but truth is stranger than fiction.

J'accuse, the 2019 movie, belongs to a venerable lineage of cinematic accounts of the Dreyfus affair. There were already many films during the affair itself. The most prominent one was produced and directed by none other than Georges Méliès, the father of film fantasy. His eleven-part film series L'Affaire Dreyfus (1899), also available on dvd and in YouTube, was not in fairy-tale mode, but was conveyed instead in restrained and laconic tableaux.

The tableaux, including The Bordereau, The Degradation, The Devil's Island, The Double Boucle, The Suicide of Colonel Henry (the key conspirator who slit his throat with a razor) and The Assassination of Maître Laborit were probably already famous by then from other mass media representations. The scenes are also all included in the new movie, their graphic power undiminished.

The story lost its shock and sensation value long ago, and now it is easier to assess its timeless values, and, alas, its newly topical charge.

A theme of permanent relevance is corruption in organizations carrying out the monopoly of violence. A code of honour and a code of silence emerges to cover up mistakes and even criminal offenses. In Finland we have recently witnessed the Jari Aarnio affair. The head of the drug police doubled as a drug baron in the criminal underworld. He was protected by his superiors and colleagues as long as possible, until he was exposed by investigative journalists.

The saddest theme of the film is antisemitism, and J'accuse is one of the starkest movies about antisemitism that I have seen. It is about pervasive everyday antisemitism of slander and defamation that builds momentum until it becomes antisemitism of the violently oppressive kind. 

The twist of the drama is that the protagonist is not Captain Dreyfus, a Jew, but Colonel Picquart, an antisemite. But Picquart is such a staunch adherent of the French Army's code of honour that the blatant miscarriage of justice in the Dreyfus affair is impossible for him to accept. As a result of his determination he is sidetracked, framed and charged for forgery himself, becoming a target of the vilest attacks from an antisemitic mob.

The internationally celebrated, bestselling novelist Émile Zola then commits himself also to the defense of Dreyfus, suffering the same fate. He is convicted in a trial to a prison sentence and has also to face the aggressive fury of the antisemitic populists, including book burning. Zola's books and writings are thrown to the bonfire, while shop windows of Jewish merchants are crashed or smeared with "sale juif" slogans.

One of the main themes of the drama is the birth of the intellectual. The very term "intellectual" was coined during the Dreyfus affair. A man of letters, a man of culture, with international prestige, uses his clout to defend a victim of social injustice, risking his career, and sometimes his life. Being an intellectual means defying mob rule, hate campaigns and crowd pressure.

J'accuse is a masterpiece, well written and well directed. It is a Roman Polanski film, with hardly any surface hallmarks of being one. It is a parallel achievement to The Pianist, which used to be Polanski's most sober film so far. Both are historical dramas based on a reality so brutal that it is almost overwhelming to comprehend. A laconic and straightforward presentation is the most effective. Stylistic flourishes, cinematic means and directorial fingerprints would only undermine the story.

But although Polanski avoids an obvious directorial signature in this movie, it is his most personal, together with The Pianist. Persecution he has known since his childhood in the France of the 1930s and the Nazi-occupied Poland of the 1940s. Antisemitism is rampant again today in his native France.

Shamefully, J'accuse is virtually a blacklisted movie because of the 1977 Samantha Geimer case. Both Samantha Geimer and Roman Polanski deserve justice. Trial was denied Polanski at the time, although in a society based on justice also the accused deserves fair treatment. The international film community should launch a procedure of arbitration to clear the matter for good. All the requirements for a fair settlement have existed for a long time. What is needed is goodwill. Revenge is the opposite of justice.

Picquart and Dreyfus meet only once, after the affair has been brought to a conclusion. Picquart has been promoted to the rank of a brigadier general and he serves as the minister of war. Unlike him, Dreyfus has not been compensated in his military rank for his prison term based on injustice. Picquart raises the question whether he has gained his position because of Dreyfus. Dreyfus replies: "No, you are there because you did your duty."