FOOTNOTE (Joseph Cedar). 105 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (March 23). For venues and times, see Movie Listings. Rating: NNN
An entire universe of conflict plays out on a modest scale in Footnote, the tale of father-and-son Talmudic scholars pitted against each other when one is mistakenly told he’s being given the prestigious Israel Prize – which has actually been awarded to the other.
The meticulous Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) has spent his career toiling resentfully in obscurity, his greatest accomplishment being cited in a footnote decades earlier by his revered mentor. Meanwhile, his populist, media-savvy son Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi) has risen to relative prominence through his easily digestible interpretations of Biblical tenets naturally, he’s the one more likely to receive an award, even though that violates every principle his father holds about scholarship.
Faced with an impossible decision – crush his father by telling him the truth, or find another way to put things right? – Uriel discovers that anything he does will make matters worse.
Writer/director Joseph Cedar (Beaufort) satirizes academic politics, personal integrity and generational resentment, but his stylistic choices undermine the points and punchlines. Cedar’s literary narration and omniscient cross-cutting interfere with the progression of the narrative rather than enhancing it. Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums got the balance of observation and commentary exactly right Cedar’s Footnote gets it wrong.
