Movie Review: J'Accuse (2019)

La Belle Epoque of Nineteenth Century France wasn’t just about the Moulin Rouge, Renoir paintings and orchids. It was a mixed period of dirty industrial capitalist growth and organising by syndicalist, anarchist and socialist working-class organisations fighting for a better existence. The salient political issue of the period was the Dreyfus Affair. This concerned the court-martialling of an army officer of that name, who was falsely accused of giving away secrets. The fact he was Jewish was a key element in the scandal, which ruptured French society for an extended period. Pro and anti-Dreyfus forces fought in the press and streets and the after-effects of these fissures were apparent for decades.

J’Accuse (2019) is a French-language film (English title: An Officer and a Spy) that looks at the Dreyfus scandal. Dreyfus spent a long period consigned to solitary confinement on a desolate, remote island as punishment. Thus, having him as the central focus of a movie, hardly makes for a gripping narrative. This causes an uncomfortable dilemma for any dramatist. How do you do cinematic justice to somebody who didn’t receive actual justice, while barely showing him? There is no easy answer.

This movie tries to solve the problem by showing the case through the eyes of Georges Picquart (Jean Dujardin) an army intelligence officer, with Dreyfus (Louis Garrel) coming into the action only fleetingly. Picquart begins as a long-term officer with a Catholic, aristocratic background and vaguely Anti-Semitic outlook. He is put in charge of an intelligence section in the army that seems somewhat amateurish but not entirely incompetent. Having attended the Dreyfus trial with an indifferent attitude, it slowly dawns on Picquart, that there is something amiss. He literally pieces together the case by examining re-constructed torn letters. In a brilliantly acted epiphany, he compares two samples of handwriting and concludes Dreyfus couldn’t have done it. This realisation the officer has been framed, works especially well if you speak English (though not French, apparently), since we see the supposedly incriminating letter in a frame on the wall. The remainder of the film tracks the prolonged efforts of Picquart to seek help for Dreyfus, despite the obstacles placed in his way by the reactionary and anti-Jewish hierarchy within the army high command.

The bulk of the acting effort in J’Accuse relies on the abilities of Dujardin. He is probably best known to English-speaking audiences for his Oscar-winning role in the silent movie The Artist (2011) and as an oleaginous Swiss banker in Wolf of Wall Street (2013). Here he once again does a magnificent job in portraying a difficult character. Picquart decides to aid Dreyfus not due to any love for the man himself but simply out of a conscience that won’t let him rest. It’s a part that could so easily have veered into a wooden righteousness that would have collapsed the entire movie around him. Instead Dujardin manages to retain our sympathies throughout by an understated determination. We occasionally see moments of fire, such as during court scenes, but these are mostly reined in. He is a quiet one-man army within the army. The supporting cast are all fine, though given less to do.

In terms of the other departments of film making, the outstanding feature is the mise-en-scene. The movie is set and made in Paris. It really invokes a sense of the period. There are bourgeois patrons with walking sticks sitting outside cafes, workmen in dirty overalls, small dimly lit dwellings, nightclubs with dancers performing the can-can, primitive automobiles and horse shit in the streets. This sense of time and place goes a long way in assisting the audience to accept the story. There is not a minute where you doubt this is the fin-de-siecle. The directing is straight forward and matches the down-to-earth ambience the rest of the piece aims for.

J’Accuse is nowhere near the first movie on the subject. In fact, the first cinematic presentation of the affair came in eleven one-minute segments in 1899 by the famous Georges Melies. It was followed by a stodgy German production in 1930, a reasonably engaging one starring Miguel Ferrer in 1958 and a typically idiosyncratic production Prisoner of Honor (1991) by Ken Russell. The latter starred Richard Dreyfuss as Picquart, who had an understandably personal interest in the topic. So, while there may be a long lineage of Dreyfus-related cinema, it must be said that this latest one is probably the best.

There are some real difficulties lurking here though. These relate to the personnel making the film and an attendant scandal of its own around that. The Director of the movie is Roman Polanski. He has had a long and mixed career, with some definite masterpieces along the way such as Knife in the Water (1962), Chinatown (1974), The Pianist (2002). His biography is one with incidents that should lend themselves to some sympathy. For example, his survival as a Jewish child during the Holocaust or his pregnant wife Sharon Tate being murdered by the Manson Family.

None of the positive aspects of his life overshadow the fact Polanski is a convicted fugitive child molester! In fact, production of J’Accuse was held up due to the filing of U.S. extradition papers in relation to the crime he had pleaded guilty to decades before. This effort has thus far proven unsuccessful due to Polanski’s joint French/Polish citizenship. In an interview Polanski sullied the memory of Dreyfus by arguing there was an allegory between the historical case and his own. This caused some Jewish commentators to argue that Jews should refuse to watch or review the movie (https://www.thejc.com/comment/opinion/why-we-should-not-be-watching-roman-polanski-s-film-on-the-dreyfus-affair-1.488293).

What is the best way to react to such a situation? The film is excellent, and Polanski is a scumbag. That much is clear. Hopefully one day somebody will make a better movie about the Dreyfus Affair. In the meantime, much like previous artistically accomplished but morally compromised work (for example Birth of a Nation (1915) we should take this one on its own merits as an artwork, without buying into the bullshit personal pleading by its maker. Polanski should be thoroughly and repeatedly condemned, and Dreyfus should be freed from him.