Footnote (2012)

This is a movie that is surprising.  It focuses on a father and his son, both of whom are Talmudic scholars.  The father, Eliezer, is the sort of scholar who immerses himself in the smallest details, laroing tirelessly and pointing out the tiniest inconsistencies in various texts.  He believes that his approach is the only way to do scholarly activity and he has no patience with his son, Uriel, who writes sweeping summaries about Talmudic stories that are both academically praised and widely popular.  The father is harsh and unforgiving in his judgement of the son, while the son remains respectful of his father.

The two men are very different in their scholarship, but surprisingly similar in their character.  The son is a frequent interviewee on television and very socially able, while the father is almost autistic in his inability to manage the simplest of social interactions, even with his closest family members, but beyond that, they are very much alike, and the traits they share are not the ones that you might hope for.  In any case, the son is put into a very difficult situation, and in finding a way out of it, both he and his father learn about themselves and the other.  The movie has darkly comic moments, but prepare to be comtemplative rather than to laugh when you watch it.  The movie was an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, and honor that is richly deserved.