The Age of Commercialism

good film but with many flaws

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Joseph Cedar's Footnote (2011) is a very different film than his Beaufort (2007). It's an intimate family drama, often comic, without explicit political reference. Yet both warn audiences against the dangers of the bunker mentality. In the second, set on the home front, the leading characters suffer from the destructive intransigence of their wills. The central figures, the famous Talmudic scholars Eliezer Shkolnik and his son Uriel, and their archenemy Grossman are so firmly set in their righteousness that they cannot countenance the compromises that could lead to justice and to peace of mind.Indeed the film's key word is "fortress." Uriel publicly thanks his father for having made their home a cultural fortress. When Uriel secretly writes the jury's supposed citation for his father's mistaken award, he slips that term in again. That word prompts Eliezer to doubt the validity of his award — and enables him to remember that the cell-phone call informing him of the prize named his son, not him. Eliezer's hunger for the award deafened him to his son's name.The settings support that term. The offices, the library, and especially both scholars' homes are veritable fortresses of books and papers in their case dedicated to the abstruse minutiae of Talmudic studies. They live in a fortress against the realities and obligations outside. In this sense the film may allude to the problematic isolation of Israel's burgeoning Haredim community from the responsibilities of Israeli citizenship. But Uriel is an academic star. On Shavuot eve he pops up all over the city delivering six lectures. Where Eliezer wears yellow headphones to drown out the outside world — i.e., his family — Uriel has become a public intellectual, a celebrity, to his father's disdain. Although Eliezer's parents moved to Israel in 1932, and he was born there, he seems to personify the Old Jew, Uriel the New. Eliezer is a couch cartoffle, while Uriel plays a mean, very mean, game of squash. Eliezer is resigned to being the Victim, having lost the Israel Prize 20 years running. When Uriel is victimized — the theft of his clothing in the gym — he responds with bravado, exiting in a fencer's uniform, assuming the aristocratic bearing of the German/Austrian enemy. In contrast, Eliezer bristles when the security guard asks him to bare his wrists — he reads the blue entry bracelets as if they were tattooed numbers. As in Beaufort, the Israeli security guard's German shepherd evokes the concentration camps. As Eliezer approaches his own award ceremony at the end, he seems completely dissociated from the surreal business around him — costumed dancers, drummers, the paraphernalia of a televised awards show — especially the puffs of gas-like vapour as the winners approach the stage. Though he was spared the Nazi nightmare this Old Jew assumes its psychological scars and its indelible memories — and responds to every slight with aggressive belligerence. In Eliezer's survey the definitions of "fortress" range down from security and shield to trap. Both men are trapped by their shields against each other. But where Uriel annually nominates his father for the Israel Prize and fights to let him keep it after the mistaken announcement, Eliezer uses the newspaper interview to attack his more famous son's academic standing. The family visit to Fiddler on the Roof leaves Eliezer complacently humming "Tradition," while his son seethes in anger and his wife is pained by knowing of her husband's delusion. Eliezer obviously missed the play's thrust, which is the fiddler's delicate balance on the rooftop trying to modulate his Tradition to deal with the changing world. For Eliezer tradition remains an indomitable fortress.Uriel's meeting with the awards committee is the film's most resonant scene. It begins with telling comedy: the room is so small, so crammed with chairs and people, that any movement is a problem. The image of people jammed together in too small a space clearly indicates that whatever other themes and issues the film may examine, it is crucially about Israel — the sliver of land surrounded by the sea and the massive nations of antagonists bent upon driving the Jews into it. In a space so small there is no room for such heated and profoundly protracted differences. Yet in that small space the conflicts persist. The space filled with chairs is also filled with egos, with fortresses, the characters determined to defend their principles to the end. Uriel properly challenges Grossman on the amount of anger and violence caused by his intransigent defence of his Truth. In that jam no compromise is possible. But in the freer confines of Grossman's office/fortress, Uriel manages to draw out a painful and expensive resolution. The space theme spreads beyond that room. Eliezer and Uriel are academically jammed into a minuscule area of scholarship. Eliezer constantly makes himself an outsider, getting trapped outside his son's award ceremony, walking beside the family car, standing apart in family photos. Grossman is ramming together his garbage cans when he calls to Eliezer his unwelcome Mazel tov on Uriel's success. The film closes on the TV host's instruction to rise for Hatikvah, Israel's national anthem. That confirms that the film's family drama and the academic politics are but metaphors for the nation's predicament. We don't learn Eliezer's decision on accepting the award because we don't know which way Israel's vehemently divided patriotisms will go. We don't hear the anthem but we know its powerful sway. Perhaps the clash of too rigid and righteous fortresses, each with its own ardent truth, risks reducing the national project to a footnote. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

One thing that has become common in American popular culture - if you can call it culture - is to have all sorts of salacious family feuds. That makes it all the more satisfying to see Joseph Cedar's "Hearat Shulayim" ("Footnote" in English). The movie focuses on a father and son, both of whom are professors at the Talmudic Research department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Despite the father's extensive studies, the Israel Prize committee refuses to recognize his work, while the son has garnered a lot of respect. One day, the father receives a call announcing that he's winning the prize. There's just one problem: the committee meant to call the son.The movie makes sure to avoid tabloid-style situations. It takes a serious approach to the situation. Probably the most effective scene is when the son meets the Israel Prize committee in a cramped office and reminds them of the hypocrisy of their decision to deny his father the prize. Nonetheless, the tension between father and son remains. In the end, it's a really good movie. I haven't seen many Israeli movies, but now I would like to.

FOOTNOTE is an appropriately titled sparklingly intelligent and entertaining film written and directed by Joseph Cedar. With a small cast and a focused story this little film form Israel is not only a pleasure to watch as a story performed as shared by brilliant actors, but it is also one of the most visually artistic and creative venture of cinematography to be on the small screen in a long time: the genius cinematographer is Yaron Scharf. Add to this a musical score that enhances every moment of the story - courtesy of composer Amit Poznansky - and the film simply succeeds on every level.In a most ingenious way we are introduced to the two main characters - father and son, both professors in the Talmud department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The film opens on the confused and somewhat unattached facial expression of the seated father Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar Aba) as he listens to his ebullient son Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi) being inducted into the prestigious Israeli academic union. Uriel's acceptance speech reflects his childhood when his father informed him upon questioning that he was a 'teacher' - an occupation the young Uriel found embarrassing at the time, but now honors his father for this guidance. After the ceremony we slowly discover that there is a long-standing rivalry between father and son. Uriel has an addictive dependency on the embrace and accolades that the establishment provides, while Eliezer is a stubborn purist with a fear and profound revulsion for what the establishment stands for, yet beneath his contempt lies a desperate thirst for some kind of recognition: his only clam to fame after long years of intensive research is that the man who published his findings mentions Eliezer in a footnote. When it comes times for the Israel Prize, Israel's most prestigious national award, to be awarded, a clerical error results in a telephone call informing Eliezer that he has won, while in reality the award was meant for his son Uriel. How this error is resolved open all manner of windows for examining family relationships, fame, pure academia, and forgiveness.The film is an unqualified success. Lior Ashkenazi (so well remembered from 'Walk on Water' and 'Late Marriage' among others) gives a bravura performance and that of Shlomo Ben Aba balances it in quality. The supporting cast is strong. Joseph Cedar has produced a fine film very much enhanced by the brilliance of the cinematography that tells the story as much as the dialogue. Grady Harp

It's not like this is a bad movie but it's just one like dozens of others, that get made each year, mostly in Europa or as little art-house movies in America. When watching this movie I just couldn't help wondering what was supposed to be so special about it. In my opinion there is nothing special about it really but that of course does not make this a bad movie to watch as well.It's simply an enjoyable and light little movie, that doesn't ever get too heavy handed, even though it could had easily gone that way. And I thank the movie for that but at the same time it's also giving too little in return. The movie is taking a more comedy approach to its buildup but with as a problem that there isn't really any true comedy in this movie. It sort of reminded me of a Wes Anderson movie. They are supposed to be comical movies, without anything comical ever happening in it really. It's just not my favorite style of film-making but I know I'm probably a minority on this, so to most people, this won't be a complaint at all.It's a movie with a good enough story, that ensures that the movie keeps going at all time. It's definitely not a boring movie to watch, despite of a slower type of approach at times.I wasn't the biggest fan of its visual and technical approach though. I don't know, I guess I have just seen a bit too many movies like this already, so I'm sort of starting to get fed up with these type of movies looking all the same with its camera-handling and editing, that all should remind you of a more indie type of movie. I really did wish that this movie would bad done some more new and interesting stuff at times. That way I would had, no doubt, got more into the movie and would had found it more interesting and pleasant to watch all. It now instead is not a movie that I can wholeheartedly or enthusiastically recommend to you, since it just isn't ever doing anything special, with its story, characters or visuals.Certainly not bad and still quite good for what it is but it's still a movie you could so easily do without.7/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/