10 Movies That Aren't About What You Think
1. It's About Roman Polanski Himself - An Officer & A Spy
Roman Polanski's 2019 film An Officer and a Spy is a dramatisation of the Dreyfus affair - an infamous miscarriage of justice in which French Jewish artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of treason and initially sentenced to life imprisonment at the penal colony on Devil’s Island.
While in the hands of most other filmmakers the movie would be taken as a mere historical drama based on a fascinating true story, given that Polanski has been an exile from the U.S. government since 1977 - when he fled the country after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor - it's impossible to view it this way.
With the film depicting Dreyfus as a martyred exile, numerous prominent critics drew parallels between this and Polanski's story - something Polanski himself even admitted as inspiration while making the movie - but while Polanski evidently sees kinship between himself and Dreyfus, it's worth noting that Dreyfus was innocent, while Polanski pleaded guilty, which only made the discourse surrounding the film's release that much more vitriolic.
Though reviews largely praised Polanski's filmmaking, they were less thrilled at the neon-signposted implication that he too suffered a miscarriage of justice when the stated facts of his case suggest otherwise.