Anybody who knows film knows who Roman Polanski is, and anyone who knows who Roman Polanski is also knows that something has been following him for most of his career.

You could say that 30 years after being convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl, especially considering his childhood and personal tragedies, his remarkable career as a filmmaker and even the apparent acquittal from his victim, Polanski has paid his dues and it’s time to let bygones be bygones. There is, however, that one part about being convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl. The details are far too repulsive to go into here, but for anyone who’s either been a victim or known a victim, this sort of crime is intolerable in any regard.

Don’t consider this a full-on condemnation of Polanski or his work as a filmmaker, because there’s certainly more than enough to celebrate and sympathize with, but the fact of the matter is that there’s now a bigger issue at hand here. Whether you think he should be free to continue his life or whether he should be extradited back to the US to serve his original sentence, the fact that now dozens of high-profile figures in the American and European filmmaking communities have come to support a man who has undoubtedly committed a heinous crime has escalated things to another level. I can’t think of another instance where things have been so cut-and-dry and yet so many people of note have come down on what appears to be the wrong side.

All I can wonder is what logic these people are playing by. By “these people”, I mean names you’d easily recognize like Martin Scorcese, Steven Soderbergh, Wes Anderson, Harvey Weinstein, Mike Nichols, Neil Jordan, Darren Aronofsky, Woody Allen and plenty of others. Can all of these people be wrong? Do they realize what they’re saying to the world or are they simply standing alongside Polanski as a show of solidarity? Do they know something the rest of us don’t?

Personally, it’s given me a new perspective on these artists and filmmakers and where their judgments lie. They’ve clearly declared their support for a convicted criminal, but does that make it any more or less powerful a statement to the rest of the public? Is it a substantial movement in the making or will these celebrities eventually find themselves eating crow? Either way, what everyone involved is counting on is that the public eye (including the authorities) will believe as they do, but how likely is that?