Footnote

Hello, and welcome again to more CAE movies, the best of the arty, bizarre and underappreciated. To start this term, we are looking at Cannes favourite Israeli film, Footnote, directed by Joseph Cedar. The story is exceptionally simple. A father, Prof. Eliezer Shkolnik (played by Shlomo Bar Aba), who has spent his entire life researching and teaching at the Talmudic Research department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, finally gets told that he will be given the Israel Prize after trying to get it for nearly 20 years. The only problem is that it was really meant for more popular and successful his son, Prof. Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi), who is also a Talmudic professor. What plays out in the film is a power struggle, a battle if you will, plays out between the father and son, and on many other levels, including generational misunderstandings and arguments between different methods of academic research. There is even a subplot about the social hierarchy of the university, shown with Eliezer's rival, Prof. Yehuda Grossman (Micah Lewensohn).

This film reminds me mostly of Shame, in the fact that a lot of what happens isn't fully explained and left up to audience interpretation. The director (thankfully!) is aware of this, and if you look up any interview with him about this film, he can give you his opinions on certain aspects. But this is my take on some of the thematic elements of the film. (I know that's just a roundabout way to get the analysis, but seriously, Joseph Cedar is one smart dude, and it's nice to hear a director explain what he wanted to do with his film rather than just say 'Interpret it yourself!'). The best way to sum up what is going on underneath all the layers of the film is to quote the director quoting Henry Kissinger: "The reason academic politics are so bitter, is that there is so little at stake." This is clear through the fact that there are three characters (Eliezer, Uriel and Grossman) who all study the same thing, "different versions and phrasings of the Jerusalem Talmud" (thank you Wikipedia!) and the competition and bitterness between the three of them is clear throughout the film.

The father and son battle at the centre of the film is, for lack of a better word, sad. This is the only film I've seen where the two main characters never share a word with each other. It's not that they don't face each other or share the screen together, no. They never speak to each other (from what I remember. There may be one conversation that they share.) And as such, we have to view their relationship through how they interact and the conversations they have with other characters. We see that the father hardly ever talks to his family, that he is almost uncomfortable to be around them, particularly his son and his wife. A lot of the time we have to guess what he is thinking from his facial expressions. The son is a lot more extroverted, complaining a lot to his wife and speaking his frustrations instead of bottling them. But even for their obvious differences, they're still similar enough for you to believe that they are father and son. They are both stubborn and proud, though Eliezer has a silent pride that you get from his expressions and the way he holds himself, and it comes from his jealously of his sons success. Uriel's pride (or broken pride, depending on where you are in the film) comes from the anger he feels towards his father and the fact that his father
can never accept that he is the more successful of the two.

But I said that this relationship was sad, and the reason for that is that you never get the feeling that they will never reconcile their differences, especially after this incident. Just to prove this, the film starts and ends on Eliezer's face. In the beginning, he is at an award ceremony for his son, who has just been accepted into the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. but instead of looking please, he looks put out and annoyed to be there, showing his disgust at his son for achieving more greatness than him in his own field. At the end, Eliezer is about to receive the Israel Prize, and after all that has happened, we finally see the fear that he may never mend his relatioship with his son, and we get the feeling that he is having an internal struggle about whether an award for academic achiements that he has waited for all his life is more important to him that his son.

Both main characters are sympathetic in their own way, yet both are also incredibly hard to like, throughout the film you'll find your sympathies constantly switching sides. Both actors are exceptional, but the quiet performance from Shlomo Bar Aba (who is better known as a stage comedian in Israel) as Eliezer outshines the rest of the cast, if only because his is the harder role, and he is able to show every thought on his face. The wife of Eliezer, Yehudit (played so movingly by Alisa Rosen) is probably the most empathetic out of the cast, as she is pulled between two opposing forces and is herself forced to take sides in this mistake. The other woman in the film is Uriel's wife, Dikla Shkolnik (Alma Zack). While she hasn't got much to do, she is the ear in which Uriel pours all of his troubles and frustrations, and therefore becomes an outsider commenting on what is happening between the father and son. And even with the little screen time she is given, her character is still as complex as any of the others that are focused on in this film.

Tradition, and moving away from tradition, is a big theme that is brought to the forefront when the family go to see a production of Fiddler on the Roof, which outlines the differences each generation faces, and how their decisions are opposed by the previous generation, who demands the traditional way. This is not only present between Eliezer and Uriel, but also between Uriel and his son, who Uriel believes is wasting his life, and one scene he actually lashes out at his son because he can't understand why he is hesitating before proceeding with his studies. This triple generational problem shows us that not only within academic circumstances can one expect something like the misunderstandings this family faces to happen. One last little symbolic motif I want to talk about is the concept of a fortress, and how a fortress can be both a sanctuary and a prison, which is clear in the character of Eliezer, as he shields everyone from his thoughts. Even his study looks like a fortress, and we see him cutting off people by putting on head-phones to drown out everything but his own mind.

Anyway, enough of the thematic stuff. Let's movie on to how the movie is presented. There are some devices used in here that remind me of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, especially in the way that the two main characters are introduced to us. There are also title cards that appear at the beginning of any important moment, to foreshadow what's about to happen. This disarms the viewer into thinking that the film is a comedy, which it really isn't. But the main problem that a lot of people have with the film is the music. It's this farcial, jaunty score that juxtaposes terribly with the serious nature of the film. For some light hearted scenes it sort of works (like the scene in which Uriel loses his clothes and has to walk around the campus with only a towe on, don't ask!), but even then, the music is at best annoying. It draws too much away from the action instead of highlighting what is going on in the film. And because of that, the tone is all over the place, and doesn't really settle until the last third of the film. That's mainly why this is such a hard film to market, because it doesn't seem to know whether to take itself seriously or not, and if you go into it expecting a comedy, you will be very surprised.

It is a shame that the main problem of the film is a technical one, as everything else is more than satisfactory. If you can put up with the sudden tone changes, then this is definitely a film I reccomend you to see. The story and the acting in it are amazing, and for all those symbolism fans, there is a lot here to keep you entertained, and I can safely say that there is no film like it. Hell, it reminded me of Shame and Jean-Pierre Jeunet! That's go to count for something!

(Next review should be Wish You Were Here, unless I get bored and change my mind. And here's the interview with director Joseph Cedar, which explains a lot of the film better than I ever could!
http://www.emanuellevy.com/interview/footnote-interview-with-director-joseph-cedar/ )