Lior Ashkenazi and Shlomo Bar Aba in
a scene from Joseph Cedar's Footnote
Oscar For Israel?
Will this finally be the year for an Israeli Academy Award?
Tom Tugend
Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.
oseph Cedar's Footnote, Israel's
entry in the Oscar sweepstakes
for Best Foreign Language Film,
jumped the first major hurdle by mak-
ing the shortlist of nine semifinalists.
When the top five finalists were revealed
Jan. 24, Footnote was among those nomi-
nated, along with Bullhead (Belgium),
In Darkness (Poland), Monsieur Lazhar
(Canada) and A Separation (Iran).
Footnote is Cedar's fourth feature film in
an 11-year career, and each one has been
selected by the Israeli film industry to rep-
resent the country at the Academy Awards.
In 2007, his war picture Beaufort was
one of the five Oscar finalists, but neither
this nor any other Israeli entry has ever
walked off with the golden statuette. Cedar
and his countrymen fervently hope that
the fourth time will be the charm. More
about this film later.
.
This year 63 countries, from Albania to
Vietnam, vied in the foreign-language film
competition, considered one of the most
unpredictable of the Oscar categories.
Last year was the first in memory that
no domestic or foreign film dealing with
the Holocaust or the Nazi era was entered
in any Academy Award category. On that
basis, this reporter predicted that the
Schindler's List and Inglourious Basterds
era had passed, and that from now on this
historical genre would deal with more
recent conflicts and genocides.
It took only one year to prove the proph-
ecy wrong with Poland's entry In Darkness,
40
January 26 • 2012
also a Best Foreign Language nominee.
The movie's settings and emotions are as
lightless as the underground sewers of
Lvov, where a dozen Jewish men, women
and children actually hid for 14 months
during the German occupation of Poland.
Their unlikely protector was a rough-
hewn Polish sewage worker and part-time
thief, who knew all the hiding places in
the underground system because that's
where he worked and stashed his loot.
At the helm of In Darkness is the
superb Polish director Agnieszka Holland
(Europa, Europa), whose forte is to delin-
eate the shades of the-human character. In
this as in her other works, victims, heroes,
villains and bystanders each have their
strengths and weaknesses, varying with
time and circumstance.
"I have always been intrigued by the
contradictions and extremes in human
nature she said in a phone interview. "I
wonder at how fragile and how strong we
are, how evil and irrational under some
conditions, and how brave and compas-
sionate at other times:'
The Netherlands' entry, Sonny Boy,
which did not make the preliminary cut,
tells the actual story of two unlikely rescu-
ers. A middle-aged Dutch housewife runs
off with and marries a black Surinamese
student more than 20 years her junior.
Under the German occupation, they hide
several Jews in their home. Similar to
Anne Frank's fate, the couple was betrayed,
arrested and died in captivity.
One trend among foreign film produc-
ers, first noted last year, is the growing
emphasis on such themes as internal
conflicts, problems of immigrants and
life under the former Soviet occupation of
East European countries.
Examples are films from Bosnia and
Ireland (ethnic cleansing), Colombia
(guerrillas vs. military), Czech Republic
(expulsion of ethnic Germans after World
War II), Estonia (Soviet army deserter
returns), Kazakhstan (Soviets invade
Afghanistan), Italy and Romania (illegal
immigrants) and Lebanon (Christian-
Muslim conflict).
New York-born Joseph Cedar, 43, is
that rarity among Tel Aviv filmmakers, an
Orthodox Jew, and he explored the gulf
between observant and secular Israelis
in his first two films, Time of Favor and
Campfire.
His next picture was Beaufort, a war,
or better said, anti-war, film. In sharp
contrast, his current movie, Footnote, cen-
ters on the rivalry between two talmudic
scholars, who also are father and son.
"OMG, what could be more boring:' I
can hear the second and third generations
of my family moan, but in Cedar's hands
the movie has more tension per frame
than a gun-toting action picture or apoca-
lyptic sci-fi epic.
The father and son, Eliezer and Uriel
Shkolnik, are both shining lights in the
Department of Talmudic Studies of the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where
rivalries are fierce.
As former Harvard professor Henry
Kissinger allegedly observed, academic
politics are so vicious because the stakes
are so low.
Maybe so, but to the two Shkolnik
philologists, the stakes in their lifelong
studies of the authenticity and meaning
of each word in different talmudic ver-
sions and editions are far higher than the
struggles of warring countries or the rise
and fall of national economies.
The director, himself the son of
renowned Hebrew University biochemist
Howard Cedar, firmly rejects the assump-
tion that the protagonists in the film
resemble in any way the persons or rela-
tionships in his own family
"The film's talmudists in no way repre-
sent my father and myself' the younger
Cedar said. "Actually, their relationship is
my nightmare, not my reality"
Yet Footnote explores the balance
between uncompromising honesty and
family relationships. Says Cedar, "What if
my son becomes a more successful direc-
tor than I am, but makes movies that I
hate? Will I tell him how I really feel or
preserve family harmony?"
On a national scale, the insistence on
one's absolute truth contributes to civic
violence-in Israel, Cedar believes. "We now
have a generation that considers 'compro-
mise' a bad word, and social harmony has
been taken hostage by people who claim
to know the absolute truth:'
Although Footnote will not be released
in American theaters until March, it has
received favorable reviews. At the Cannes
Film Festival, Cedar was awarded the top
prize for best screenplay, and in the United
States, the National Board of Review of
Motion Pictures placed the film among
the five top foreign-language features.
But the competition for the ultimate
winner will be rough. In both the United
States and Europe, the critical favor-
ite at this point is the Iranian entry A
Separation, which has won a string of
awards at international film festivals as
well as the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-
Language Film.
The film by Asghar Farhadi masterfully
combines an easily recognizable situa-
tion — an impending divorce in an upper
middle class family — with the strange
atmosphere, pieties and judicial proceed-
ings of an unfamiliar society.
The Oscar-nominated Footnote also
will compete for Best Screenplay at
the Independent Spirit Awards on Feb.
25, a day before the Feb. 26 Academy
Awards broadcast. Its competitors are
Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist;
Tom McCarthy for Win Win; Mike
Mills for Beginners; and Alexander
Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash for The
Descendants. 0
The 84th Annual Academy Awards
will be broadcast 8 p.m. Sunday, Feb.
26, on ABC. The Independent Spirit
Awards will be broadcast 10 p.m.
Saturday, Feb. 25, on the IFC.