Film #148: FOOTNOTE

Joseph Cedar's FOOTNOTE may have a delightful, insistent score by Amit Poznansky (it's a feature that veers some people towards labelling the movie a comedy, which it often is and is not). But, really, FOOTNOTE is a anchor-fluffy tragic tale of a life not quite wasted, but certainly not as fully appreciated as it might be.

Schlomo Bar-Aba plays the elderly, heavy-hearted Talmudic scholar Eliezer Shkolnik, a 20-time loser of the prestigious Israel Prize, given yearly to influential teachers. When Eliezer is finally notified he's attained the achievement following a lifetime of professional disappointment, he's ecstatic (at least, on the inside). Shkolnik's satisfied in what he knows he knows, but he's had to sit back and watch as his main contribution to Talmudic study has been reduced to a footnote in a "greater" scholar's bigger book. But, at least, he's now being recognized for that earthshaking footnote.

Only...it's not the case...this is a mistake...

The tiny committee assigned to give out the prize (all here are brilliantly played) really meant to give the award to Eli's son, Uriel, also a respected Talmudist (he's played by a stunning Lior Ashkenazi, the Brad Pitt of Israel, who dresses down for the role). With his surprisingly long, humorously claustophobic, and passionate debate with the prizegivers (including one powerhouse colleague who has a grudge against his father), a moral quandry is launched on the part of both the son--who struggles over whether to tell his father about the unmeant slight (which, if he lets his father know about it, will cost the son the opportunity to ever win the award in the future)--and for the father, who ultimately must confront the notion that the high point of his life's work might finally amount to a mere footnote in another person's book.

While building up to a dreamy, surreal climax, the American-born Cedar's fast-moving and impressively designed movie (it's a whirl of wacky filmic tricks) cynically pokes holes in the petty concerns those in academia cling to for fear of plunging back down into a reality that, day by day, diminishes their egoist, closely-held values. FOOTNOTE is one of those movies that looks like distant fruit to those not familiar with its world, but it's a fruit, when tasted, seems as if it possesses the flavors of the Earth. It's a movie about fathers and sons (like many films these days), but that taste that somehow should be sweet might turn out to be bitter--just so you know...

Jamey Duvall conducts an incisive interview with FOOTNOTE's writer/director Joseph Cedar here on MOVIE GEEKS UNITED...