MARILYN PENN: NOTES ON THE MOVIE “FOOTNOTE”….PLEASE SEE NOTE
THIS IS AN ADMIRABLE ISRAELI MOVIE…AS COMPLICATED AND GIVEN TO AS MANY INTERPRETATIONS AS THE TALMUD ITSELF….READ THIS EXCELLENT REVIEW AND SEE THIS “MUST SEE” MOVIE…..RSK
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If you haven’t seen Footnote yet, you should; it’s a movie that lends itself to the type of discussion and explication that’s usually reserved for significant literary works. If you haven’t seen it and intend to, please don’t read this article – you should come to your own conclusions before reading mine. Half the fun of this movie is trying to solve a puzzle for which there are many clues and allusions; your conclusion depends upon how you interpret those and it’s fitting in a movie that has the Talmud at its core, that there will always be another point of view.
The movie begins with our introduction to Professor Eliezer Shkolnick, a philologist and professor of Talmud who has devoted 30 years to piecing together and authenticating a volume which a colleague, Professor Grossman, subsequently finds intact, thereby stealing the thunder from Eliezer’s life work. Though the antiquarian volume corroborates all of Eliezer’s theories and findings, it renders them superfluous and we see him become increasingly marginalized at the university. His son, Uriel, on the other hand is an academic star, a charismatic professor whose broader interests in the Talmud encompass the social life and mores of Jews in Babylon, making the subject interesting to many young female students. The movie begins with Uriel being inducted into the privileged realm of the Academy, yet another plume in his well-feathered yarmulke. Although he praises his father in his acceptance speech, giving him the credit for being his role model, Eliezer’s jealousy and discomfort are apparent in his body language and his grudging unwillingness to celebrate his son. He steps outside the auditorium building during a break in the program and we see the stubborn, brittle side of his character as he refuses to answer the security guard’s questions, triggered by Eliezer’s having removed the bracelet that everyone else is wearing to indicate that they have passed inspection and been cleared. He wears his bitterness as a cloak of arrogance, seeing the world as his adversary. When the rest of the family rides by car, he insists on walking alone; when he is at home, he insulates himself from connections by donning earphones that shut out the noise and removing himself to sleep in the den, instead of with his wife. Despite his difficult, laconic demeanor, he is described by various characters in the movie as being “true to himself,” as “the only man of integrity in the department,” and not one to “validate a mistake because it was convenient.” At least in his professional life, he is a man of honor.
By contrast, Uriel has a warm relationship with his wife but we also see a streak of aggression in him both with his own son and in a squash game with a colleague whom he’s clearly bent on demolishing, not just defeating in a sportsmanlike manner. Nevertheless, he’s at ease in crowds and is clearly a charmer both academically and socially. After the game, Uriel steps out of a shower to discover that his clothes, wallet and phone have been stolen from the locker room. We see the back of an older nude man who may be a hint of what to think. Eventually, Uriel dons a fencer’s uniform and mask and as he exits the building, he notices his father talking to a woman in the garden. For the first time, we hear what seems like jocular conversation from this tightly wound man. Uriel is puzzled and begins to wonder whether there’s another side to his father that he knows nothing about. As with Purim, masks and secrets play a big part in this film.
Later, we see Eliezer walking with a briefcase and a shopping bag. As he walks along, a phone rings and when he answers, it becomes clear that he has been awarded the Israel Prize, the coveted award for which he has been turned down every year. We never hear the conversation ourselves but the announcement of the award is confirmed in the press and within short order, Uriel is called in to meet with the Award Committee where he discovers that the award was intended for him and only announced to his father through clerical error. But is it also possible that Eliezer stole his son’s clothes, wallet and phone and then answered the son’s cell phone? There is another scene where we see Eliezer carrying his shoes in a shopping bag, showing that this mode of transport is characteristic of him. On a symbolic level, the father, envious of his son’s acclaim, tries to appropriate his very identity. Uriel pleads with the committee to leave things as they stand and not humiliate the father who has waited a lifetime for some acknowledgement. Professor Grossman, head of the committee, is adamantly opposed and dismisses Eliezer’s work, claiming that its only significance is a brief footnote in his mentor’s book. In this scene, there are several close-ups of Grossman’s deeply furrowed forehead; as we see it magnified and detached from the rest of his face, we are looking at what looks like a brain. Grossman represents a cerebral man who, like the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz, is missing a heart. His only response to Uriel’s plea for compassion for his father’s pride, is to fall back on the rules. Eventually, he relents by binding Uriel to a stringent pact that will deny him the right to ever receive the Israel Prize in his own lifetime. He also insists that Uriel write the letter of acknowledgement to his father which Grossman will then sign. Uriel acquiesces and tells no one what has happened. As he writes the letter, he polishes it, falling back on words that are prevalent throughout his other articles.
Eliezer has now suddenly become a person of interest and a pretty young journalist comes to his home to interview him. When she asks for some photographs for the article, Eliezer’s wife finds an old one of Eliezer holding his young son, showing us a side of him that once existed but has been walled in by the carapace he has worn as a fortress against his disappointments. In the interview, Eliezer disparages the type of scholarship that his son practices, comparing it to finding empty vessels and filling them with cookie recipes. This appears in the press and is a source of profound hurt to Uriel who acts out by becoming more like his father, demeaning one of his students and lashing out at his son, saying that’s he close to giving up on him, and instead of wishing for his success may be wishing for his failure and the opportunity to gloat. Just as Eliezer appropriated Uriel’s identity by taking his possessions and his son’s award, Uriel now assumes the persona of his angry father, dismissing his loving wife at the same time. The characters have traded their respective masks.
The family goes to see a production of Fiddler on the Roof, a play that concerns both the ominous plight of European Jewry and the attitudes of a father towards his children. During the performance, Uriel cannot restrain himself from telling his mother the truth about the Israel Prize and what he has done for his father. When they leave, we see Eliezer get into the car and even hum to himself, a radical departure from his earlier refusal to join the group. He has been seduced and softened by the glimmer of public acclaim and acceptance. At home, the mother knocks on Eliezer’s closed door and we see him make room for her in his bed, a further sign that there are dents in his armor and he is coming to a place where he may finally face the truth of his deportment as husband and father.
At a tv studio where he is scheduled for an interview, Eliezer is forced to wear a shirt that isn’t his, the second time that clothes are used to symbolize issues of core identity. As he listens in rehearsal to the moderator quoting the Grossman letter with a description of his work, he is suddenly struck by the word “fortress” which set off an aha moment of intuition. He flees the studio and runs to the library and then to his home to conduct the research that will illuminate the truth about the prize. Finally, the skills that brought him to the academic insights that constitute his life work filter down to the personal side of his life that has been entombed for so long. We see him establish that fortress is a word used often by his son in his own writings and once he realizes that his son is the one who authored the letter of acknowledgement, his house of cards begins to topple. As a philologist, he searches for the exact meaning of fortress and discovers that it’s double-edged and can be both a shelter or shield and also an entrapment. As Eliezer replays events in his own mind, the audience hears for the first time the other side of the telephone conversation in which the caller distinctly mentions the name Uriel Shkolnick and even compliments him on his books which she has read and enjoyed. Eliezer understands that his need for recognition was so great that he concealed from himself what was plainly spoken.
At the end of the movie, Eliezer and his wife approach the auditorium where the prize is to be awarded. This time, he willingly extends his arm for the security bracelet, a big change from his earlier truculence. As he passes through the building, he comes to a studio where masked dancers in 18th century costume are doing the waltz to a clearly counted beat. This represents Eliezer’s orderly external world of scholarship where he knows the rules and follows them. In the next studio are dancers performing with bare torsos and sweaty bodies with no masks – the music is loud and percussive and their movements are jarring and explosive. This represents the turmoil of Eliezer’s inner life, the personal, emotional upheaval that he is experiencing as the mask of his own self-deception slips away. He has never before been willing to face the reality of what kind of father he has become, of how crippled he was by jealousy of his son and his own distress at his professional diminution. As he continues to walk towards the auditorium, he reaches the line of people who will be receiving awards. A machine is spraying a mist over their heads – is it a humidifier to cool them? There is something about the line of people and the shower spray that brings us back to the first reference in Fiddler of the fate of the Jews – here they are lined up at the showers without understanding the truth that instead of water, they will get lethal gas. By this time, by the look on Eliezer’s face and the sequence of scenes, it is clear that he has experienced an epiphany about more than the issue of the prize. The man of honesty in his work has been a fraud in his personal life as husband and father. This realization is life-changing. We see him breathing very hard. In order to integrate this realization into his now unmasked identity, he must refuse to accept the prize which was not meant for him. Truth requires that instead of accepting a sham award, he must re-find the humanity that once existed in the picture of a loving father holding his son. The last thing we see is that the program is about to start and Hatikvah will be played – the anthem of hope and redemption. The screen goes black as we are left to decide what happens.
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