Father and Son in the Film “Footnote”

The Child is the father of the Man.

Written and directed by Joseph Cedar, Footnote is a brilliant Israeli film that explores the poignant emotional double-binds of the father-son relationship, highlighted primarily through the internal struggle of a middle-aged academic who is placed in a position of almost unbearable Oedipal triumph over his narcissistic, Asperger's-like father, who is also an academic.

The film begins with a behavioural snapshot of the father, Professor Eliezer Shkolnik, who is sitting in the audience while his son, Uriel, is about to receive a major academic award. There is a perplexing and even dubious look of irritation and suppressed rage on Eliezer's face, the explanation of which becomes a guiding thread throughout the film. How could a father be so palpably unhappy at his own son's success? The tension around this troubling question steadily intensifies until it explodes, when the father is apparently awarded the prestigious Israel Prize, which he has coveted for twenty years. Uriel, although in many ways critical of his father, seems genuinely relieved at this news; we understand that he has suffered a long-standing burden of guilt stemming from his confused perceptions as a boy of his father's frustrated ambition, shame, and masochistic self-abnegation. But the triumph of the father, Elezier, does not resolve anything for either father or son. Uriel soon learns that the Israel Prize had actually been intended for him and that its misattribution to his father cannot easily be