“Footnote” is a darkly shaded, unique take on the power struggle that emerges from a father-son rivalry. An Isreali film nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Film Academy Award, it concerns the story of a father and son who are both professors of Talmudic Research at the Hebrew University of Jersusalem. Eliezer is the father who is a renown researcher and stubborn purist and never recognized for his work. Meanwhile, his son Uriel is a rising star in the field who constantly feeds on accolades and recognition. Yet in a dark twist, Uriel realizes that there could be a grave error in who actually receives the prize. “Footnote” is a finely layered take on the complexities of sharing the spotlight with your own family. It’s also a fun, well-acted compare-and-contrast character study between father and son, and while there are some differences between the two, they’re more alike than they ever realized. Director and writer Joseph Cedar handles the character study just fine, though some of the graphics that appear on screen are both unnecessary and heavy-handed (a simple voiceover would’ve sufficed). Overall, “Footnote” is a richly satisfying film down to the final frame, when Cedar (who won a screenplay award at the Cannes film festival for his work), leaves it to the audience, perhaps ever so ironically, to write their own footnote for what happens with Eliezer and Uriel.
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