Let’s hear it for footnotes! Anthony Grafton has sung their praises in his splendid book, The Footnote: A Curious History, and academics swear by them, but they do not get the attention they deserve. Relegated to the end of the page or the back of the book lest they clog the narrative, footnotes are given the cold shoulder by most readers. Specialists, of course, mine them thoroughly. They know this is where scholars strut their stuff. Everyone else gives them a pass.
In a real bravura turn, the film frees the footnote from its marginal, text-based existence and magically renders it a real and haunting screen presence.
Winner of the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the recent recipient of 13 nominations for the Ophir Awards – Israel’s equivalent of the Oscars – the film, I hope, will make its way to the United States before long.
Happily, a number of film buffs, myself among them, had the opportunity to see several clips from Footnote when, a few months ago, the Program in Judaic Studies brought Joseph Cedar to town. Thanks to the generous support of GW’s Middle East Policy Forum, the filmmaker spoke at the D.C.-JCC, where one of his earlier and widely celebrated films, Beaufort, was being screened.
The morning after, Cedar gave a few of us a sneak peek. I, for one, came away with an enhanced appreciation of the filmmaker’s many gifts, as well as with a renewed belief in the footnote’s ability to cast a spell.
