I'm usually harsh on our local filmmaking, but this is truly an excellent film, one of the top 10 Israeli movies I've seen. A simple low-key drama about the tension between a father and son - two professors in the same field of studies.This movie is a prime example of a fantastic storytelling: Excellent direction, score, editing and writing, combined with a performance of the lead actor. This is how your take a simple story and turn it into a fantastic experience.who is well known as a comedian and does a fantastic job here in a dramatic roleI enjoyed the movie even more on the second viewing. Shlomo Baraba is well known as a comedian and I had a hard time getting used to seeing him in a dramatic role. This time I didn't have that problem. He was excellent and does a fantastic job in this dramatic role.What I was missing is a dramatic scene by the wife: When she goes to his bed (why are they not sleeping together? Is she mad at him? We're not told), the scene was crying for a dramatic speech by the wife, something in the "Oscar speech" material - and we didn't get it, which is fine for the story, but too bad for the movie as it seems like a missed opportunity.

FOOTNOTE (dir. Joseph Cedar) An unusual father and son morality drama set in the (apparently?) highly competitive world of Israeli Talmudic studies. The father had been engaged in an obscure branch of study, and was scooped by another researcher, and never received his due. His son is also a philologist and seems to have effortlessly reaped acclaim for his classical scholarship. The moral dilemma of the film is that the father has been mistakenly awarded a coveted prize that should have gone to his son. The resolution of this predicament is not terribly clear because many plot issues are not resolved, yet I feel that the father did learn of the error, but nevertheless accepts the award he does not deserve. Results may vary, but after viewing the film, I would recommend a look at the discussion on the IMDb message board for FOOTNOTE to see many interesting interpretations of this absorbing film.

"He'arat Shulayim" ("Footnote") is an Israeli 2012 Oscar contender, a 2012 Cannes screenplay award winner, and altogether a very highly praised movie. It tells a story about Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, a father and son, both Talmud scholars but with different amounts of public recognition. Eliezer devoted all of his life to comparing different versions of the Talmud but never published anything since his colleague beat him to it leaving as his greatest achievement a footnote in his mentor's book. On the other hand, his son Uriel wrote a lot of books on all kind of subjects and got praise for all of them. As a matter of fact, the movie opens with Uriel getting accepted to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the honor which his father never got, and it's immediately clear that Eliezer doesn't take it well. The plot thickens when Eliezer finds out he won the Israel Prize, the most prestigious national award, after 16 consecutive failed nominations, and Uriel learns that it is he who should get it and his father got notified by mistake.The profession of the characters could really be anything, it isn't of much relevance. What the film talks about is how easily people get infatuated with greed, jealousy and the (imagined) importance of their work. It also talks about the father-son relationship, not just through the example of Eliezer and Uriel but Uriel and his son Josh too. It shows the difference between generations but also the inevitability of our family ties. It is all well displayed in the behavior of Uriel. He tries to be a better father than his own but still makes some of the same mistakes. He also tries to help his father despite of the contempt Eliezer shows for his work, but can't help being angered by it.The movie is very precise in depicting how an academic community functions. It is all about prestige. Who will publish something first or who's work will be cited in a footnote. It is unbelievable, but true, what would people do just to get their name mentioned or written somewhere. A colleague of mine told me today "It's all about immortality.". But what does that really mean? A hundred years from now someone will be reading something and my name will be there. So what? Neither of us gets anything from that. But let's get back to the movie. In the beginning you sympathize with Eliezer. He has been working hard for years and just because someone got lucky it turns out it has all been in vain. But as the movie goes on we learn that he's no better than everybody else. He just wants the spotlights on him. In the end it's even suggested he realized that the award shouldn't go to him but he accepts it anyway. It isn't shown explicitly because the movie ends just before winners get on the stage, but I can hardly imagine any other outcome. And because of that we wound up feeling sorry for Uriel who won't get the deserved award and can't even get nominated ever again (part of the deal with the president of the committee) because of his selfish father.The acting is very good. Shlomo Bar-Aba in the role of the father and Lior Ashkenazi in the role of the son give subdued but impressive performances. Cinematographer Yaron Scharf did a good job showing libraries and houses crowded with books, emphasizing in that way the absurdity of wanting for your name to be mentioned just to be lost in a heap of others. Probably the best part of the movie is editing done by Einat Glaser-Zarhin. In the first part of the movie narrator lists things we should now about Eliezer and Uriel and it's a joy watching those sequences. The movie balances between serious drama and a little less serious comedy and is greatly helped in it by Amit Poznansky's amusing soundtrack. He often uses tense music to create a comedic moment, at the same time keeping us aware of the seriousness of the whole situation. The only thing that got me disappointed was the most lauded one, screenplay. While it has some great moments, like the one in which a numerous committee holds a meeting in the tiniest of rooms, it feels stretched and unpolished in places which decreases the overall impression.There's one more thing. The movie talks about many things. Greed, excellence, compassion, jealousy, revenge, dedication, fear, happiness, and more. But I just can't figure out what's the point. What did the author, Joseph Cedar, want to say with it. Just to be clear, this isn't one of those movies where people are wondering what is it all about. It's all very clear, it just doesn't feel like Cedar had a point to make. Maybe he just wanted to show how the things are functioning without drawing any conclusions. If so, I would find a documentary a better way to show it. If not...I don't know. Maybe I'm just too demanding. It's best you see it and decide for yourselves.More reviews at http://onlineimpressions.blogspot.com/

This bittersweet comedy from Israel is set in the rarefied world of academia and is a fine, interesting movie about the bitter relationship between a father and a son who both happen to be Talmudic scholars working at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and how their rivalry finally overcomes their filial obligations.Eliezer Shkolnik (a terrific performance by Shlomo Bar Aba) is the father, and he seems a personification of male old age grumpiness. He looks at the at the rest of his colleagues with an insufferable air of intellectual superiority, and believes he hasn't been recognized to the extent that he deserves, yet the movie hints he is a bit of a fraud himself, his main claim to fame is having been thanked in a footnote in a book by a famous Talmudic authority. The more successful Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi, who usually plays young macho men, but here plays a middle aged academic against type) is the son. The film lampoons Uriel for being a lightweight scholar and for being too attracted to the media spotlight, yet he seems to be the more psychologically rounded of the two. The tense relationship between father and son finally comes to a bitter confrontation when the elder Shkolnik is mistakenly awarded an important academic prize that was meant for the son (I'm not going to reveal anything else about the plot).I'm also obviously not going to reveal the ending but it seems underwhelming and unrealized, as if the director Joseph Cedar didn't knew how to end the movie. Thus, what was a fine film until then ends in a curiously unsatisfying way. Nevertheless, this is a fine movie with many great scenes. I especially liked two scenes: one is set in a small but tightly packed conference room and ends when one academic shoves another to the wall. In the second scene, a very pretty female journalist goes to the home of the elder Shkolnik to interview him and manages to get him to say very nasty things about his son.