“Footnote” is an Israeli film is directed and written by Joseph Cedar.

“Footnote” first got audience attention at the Cannes Film Festival. Talmudic studies use the laborious comparison of manuscript text to recreate the exact meaning of the Talmudic texts.  Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) the father is the expert, having spent over 30 years working in the field. Eliezer’s son Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi) is a sort of genius and superstar who comes to his conclusions as to the meaning of the text not through painstaking research but through his own unique methods of reinterpretation.

These two rival Talmudic scholars, father and son, must agonizingly deal with the truth of their somewhat unrealized relationship. At a key point in the film the son ruefully exclaims of his father, “I don’t know who he is, its like he is another person.” One cannot help but see the irony of scholars for decades seeking meaningful truth in a few words and perhaps missing it in the admittedly challenging bond of father and son. Obsession, love and jealousy are woven together to create an unusually entertaining mystery with deep and surprising epiphany. The Oscar nomination for this movie attests to its refreshing, intimate and universally appealing story about love, conviction and life.

Joseph Cedar says he based the story on his own unique experience at events similar to the Academy Awards and his own relationship with his career and with his father. Director Joseph Cedar was previously nominated in 2007 for ‘Beaufort’.

Shlomo Bar-Aba is a comedian and in real life very unlike the role he has to play in this movie. He says the movie was emotionally draining as he had lost his own father and never had a chance to sort out differences with him before he died.

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/austinmovies/entries/2011/05/15/footnote_review_a_cannes_surpr.html

M Romano