SCORES
Ongoing attention for Woody Allen: 5
Fairness of life to Mia Farrow: 0
SHE SAW
Woody Allen couldn't be a child molester. He's so neurotic and self-deprecating, so ineffectual, never malevolent. He couldn't be hiding a dark
secret. He wouldn't last five minutes with a secret like that before becoming so overcome by his own anxieties, he'd blurt it out to his shrink or his waiter or a barely legal ingenue. No way, not Woody.
So then Dylan Farrow must have made up the allegations against her adoptive father. Or maybe jilted ex-lover Mia Farrow coaxed her into it? These are some of the accusations made by Allen supporters in the almost 30 years since the alleged incident occurred and the subject of three years' research by award-winning investigative documentary-makers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering. For the four-part series Allen v. Farrow, they were granted access to boxes of legal documents as well as audio and video recordings that make a pretty convincing case against Allen and had previously been kept out of the public arena.
It was in the wake of #metoo that Dylan spoke out again about the sexual assault and it's clear in the documentary how completely the culture has changed in its treatment of women since then. Mia Farrow's life and career were ripped apart by the smear campaign that Allen launched against her, calling her hysterical, vindictive and self-serving. If she was, she had good reason to be: her boyfriend and co-parent had begun an immoral sexual relationship with her daughter, who was 10 when he first appeared in her life and yet somehow he managed to convince the world that there was nothing even slightly off about it. Allen's career flourished, while Farrow's perished.
Of course he denies the allegations and this week has publicly called the documentary series "a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods". Unfortunately, the downfall of this otherwise comprehensive series is that they were unable to get Allen, his wife Soon-Yi or even one person close to them to be interviewed and, of course, this leaves the film-makers wide open to criticism from Allen's many staunch supporters. As we've seen over and over again in recent years, it's almost impossible to change people's minds once they're made up. The truth is whatever one chooses to believe and Allen v. Farrow is unlikely to convince anyone who's already been poisoned against Farrow.