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The Worst Film Ever

How sad is this?

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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.

What to say: the rhythm is perfect, the tone is expertly controlled by the director, the acting is close to sublime. This character-driven narrative lacks nothing and, yes, it is unpredictable at times. The autistic father is played with deceptive ease and gusto by Shlomo Bar Aba and, when you think about it, his finding of the truth could only be unavoidable given his expertise with the written word and his penchant for making nearly impossible (for us poor mortals!) connections between expressions, phonemes and other linguistic beasts. The fact that the film ends up with us wondering if Eliezer, the father, will accept the prize or not is part of the quality of the movie: it depends on you as a viewer, as well as your personality. I think he can only accept as to level off the playing field, so to speak, and to let his son think he (his son) is in control. But who knows? Last word? Excellent!

Greetings again from the darkness. In the United States, we typically get limited access to the films of Israel. In recent years, there have been two that I like very much: The Band's Visit, and Waltz for Bashir. Written and directed by Joseph Cedar, Footnote was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Academy Award. It's a very creative and insightful story utilizing slight comedic elements to show the destructive forces of petty professional jealousy within a family.Most parents wish for true happiness for their children. If the professional success of their offspring far exceeds their own ... it is a reason to swell with parental pride. But what happens when father and son choose similar paths? What happens when animosity builds as the father's life work (30 years of research) is deemed unnecessary and irrelevant? What happens when the son becomes publicly revered and adored for his populist writing? Well, in the case of father Eliezer (Shlomo Bar-Aba) and son Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), we get strained relations and a thesis on the pitfalls of pride and ego.All of that is sufficiently fascinating for a story, but here we get an even more severe test of human nature. The father is erroneously informed that he has won the prestigious Israel Award, providing vindication and meaning to his work and well, his being. See, the award was supposed to go to the other Professor Shkolnik ... yes, his son. This much is shown in the trailer, but the true guts of this story is what happens after this mistake.There are a few tremendous scenes in the film, but two really jumped out for me. In an early scene, the son is receiving yet another reward and he is attempting to provide some credit for his father's inspiration. However, the words seem to add credence to the irrelevancy instead. The best part? The camera never leaves the face of the father and he sits quietly listening in immeasurable pain. The other scene takes place in a beyond cramped meeting room for the Award committee to discuss the mistake with Uriel. The manner it is filmed and the choreography more than make up for the fact that the group of brilliant people never thought to find a more suitable meeting place.The score of the film is one that I would appreciate more without having the film playing. The music is wonderful, but often distracting to the moment. It is interesting to note how it changes along with the posture and walking pace of Eliezer after he is informed of his award. One need not be an academic researcher or writer to understand the damaged relationship between father and son ... and how it has impacted wives, mothers and sons. That's a story that is painful in any language.

You really must be Israeli to understand it all, but some ideas can get through to anyone. Cedar the producer was once phoned up and told he would receive the "israel prize". He immediately told the man who phoned him that he should be telling his father and not him. So this is the origin of the film. What happens if the father is phoned (instead of his son) and has been waiting for the prize for many years, only the politics in the academy have prevented it? The reaction of the son (who has already had many awards) is exemplary, much to the disdain of the head of the committee who hates his father. And this message of "honour thy father" is something we should all be getting from the film, especially in a world (academic world too!) where everyone seems to be looking only to increase his own honour.