Trivial Pursuit - - Footnote (2011) - - 12 September 2012

Not recommended. Footnote was almost universally loved by the reviewing community and an Oscar nominee for best foreign language film. The movie is beautifully performed, with Isreali stage actors Shlomo Bar-Aba, as an embittered Talmudic scholar and professor, and Lior Ashkenazi as his more successful son, also an academic. Both won Israeli academy awards, as did the film and almost everyone who worked on it. It’s hard for me to articulate what I found cold at the center of Footnote. The jokey, frantic editing (Einat Glaser-Zarhin) and loopy score (Amit Poznansky) was clearly distracting. But I guess the story itself - - its incumbent pedantry - -  is maybe what put me off.  Although I admire scribe/helmer Joseph Cedar’s (Beaufort) grasp of Israeli and Jewish culture and he’s a talented filmmaker; I wish he’d picked a different story.  But that’s not very fair to the movie and its makers . . .  so do as you will.