The problem is that if a film looks, sounds or plays too differently it risks alienating critics, which may help explain why there wasn’t more applause for “Footnote,” a competition high point from the Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar.
The story of a modern patriarch and his legacy, “Footnote” pivots on the uneasy relationship between a father, Eliezer (Shlomo Bar Aba), and his son, Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), both well-known if not equally well-regarded Talmudic scholars who come to loggerheads. Punctuated by footnotes (like the Talmud) and great eruptions of music that underscore the dramatic stakes, the film careens audaciously if confidently from the personal to the political, the comedic to the near-tragic, amid discussions about Jewish masculinity and pointed visual references to what it means to live in country where armed guards search scholars on their way to the local library and even into celebrations. (Sony Pictures Classics will release the movie in America.)
(Hat-tip Pinchas Roth)
Shai, looking forward to your review and parsing.
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