Garnering nearly universal acclaim and major award noms from the Academy, Independent Spirit, and Cannes last year, American born and Jerusalem raised director Joseph Cedar’s Footnote is worthy of props for its amusingly clever script, but the film as a whole is decidely lacking. A story of a rivaling father and son, both notable Talmudic Studies professors of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the film explores the absurdity of pride and the tension of unresolved faith in family, but within this tonally unstable charade, there is little to its characters to sink our teeth into, leaving a comedic conundrum of a story with a fleeting sense of tenor. Despite this, Cedar’s film is an amusing lark that weaves within the inane realm of academic accolades and out through the misgivings of intellectual remittance.
Year after year, Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) has been passed over for the prestigious Israel Prize,...
Year after year, Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) has been passed over for the prestigious Israel Prize,...
- 7/24/2012
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Joseph Cedar's "Footnote" refuses to be easily categorized. This writer pegs it as the offspring of an uneasy marriage between Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the Coen Brothers, cira "Barton Fink," inhabiting a world where emotions frequently bend and shape reality. Probably the most nerve-wracking film ever made about men studying the Talmud, a vital text that serves as the first written record of Jewish Oral Law and rabbinical discussion that would shape the culture and faith for centuries onward, "Footnote" opens whimsically but loses that playfulness quickly. The transformation lends the picture a hardened edge, until a rapid descent into great tragedy makes for an intensely memorable final fifteen minutes.
Primarily the story of a father and son locked in competition, "Footnote" concerns aging academic Eliezer Shkolnik (a definite injoke for Russian-speaking Israelis - "shkolnik" is Russian for "student"), played by Israeli theater actor Shlomo Bar Aba. Eliezer is a life-long philologist,...
Primarily the story of a father and son locked in competition, "Footnote" concerns aging academic Eliezer Shkolnik (a definite injoke for Russian-speaking Israelis - "shkolnik" is Russian for "student"), played by Israeli theater actor Shlomo Bar Aba. Eliezer is a life-long philologist,...
- 3/9/2012
- by Mark Zhuravsky
- The Playlist
Updated through 5/17.
"An intriguing tale of an ethical dilemma complicated by academic rivalries and family tensions is told in erratic fashion in Footnote," begins Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter. "In his fourth feature, New York-born-and-trained Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar arrestingly tackles what feels like deeply felt personal material, a simmering intellectual and emotional feud between a comparably brilliant father and son, but makes several crucial miscalculations, beginning with the use of one of the most intrusive and overbearing musical scores in memory."
"Eliezer Shkolnik [Shlomo Bar-Aba], a curmudgeonly professor, and his son Uziel [Lior Ashkenazi] are both well-known Talmudic scholars and researchers," explains Barbara Scharres, blogging for the Chicago Sun-Times. "Uziel, however, reaps awards and honors galore, while his jealous father has suffered a career of being overlooked. Uziel wins a major academic award in their mutual field, but through the mistake of an office assistant, Eliezer is informed that he is the winner.
"An intriguing tale of an ethical dilemma complicated by academic rivalries and family tensions is told in erratic fashion in Footnote," begins Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter. "In his fourth feature, New York-born-and-trained Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar arrestingly tackles what feels like deeply felt personal material, a simmering intellectual and emotional feud between a comparably brilliant father and son, but makes several crucial miscalculations, beginning with the use of one of the most intrusive and overbearing musical scores in memory."
"Eliezer Shkolnik [Shlomo Bar-Aba], a curmudgeonly professor, and his son Uziel [Lior Ashkenazi] are both well-known Talmudic scholars and researchers," explains Barbara Scharres, blogging for the Chicago Sun-Times. "Uziel, however, reaps awards and honors galore, while his jealous father has suffered a career of being overlooked. Uziel wins a major academic award in their mutual field, but through the mistake of an office assistant, Eliezer is informed that he is the winner.
- 5/17/2011
- MUBI
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