Footnote
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: March 9, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
83
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New YorkerDavid DenbyApr 9, 2012
Nothing has exploded on the screen in recent years as violently as that mad quarrel in a tiny room - a room that is Israel itself. [16 April 2012, p.86]
100
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliMar 22, 2012
Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar imbues his tale of academic maneuvering, misunderstanding and mystery with the zest of passion and the zing of intrigue, It's a vivacious film, having its little fun with suspense-flick conventions (including Amit Poznansky's bouncing score) that build to a climactic finish. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMar 15, 2012
Intensely specific in story yet wide-ranging in themes, with a tone that turns on a dime from comic absurdity to close to tragedy, this is brainy, bravura filmmaking of the highest level, a motion picture that is as difficult to pigeonhole as it is a pleasure to enjoy. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertMar 14, 2012
It's one of the smartest and most merciless comedies to come along in a while. It centers on an area of fairly narrow interest, but in its study of human nature, it is deep and takes no prisoners. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 8, 2012
Footnote does function as a character study, an exceptionally rich one. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumMar 7, 2012
Footnote is itself a perfect little piece of Talmud, full of text, commentary, and colorful argument. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 22, 2012
Some of the behavior of Uriel and Eliezer will make you squirm. But Ashkenazi and Bar-Aba are so compelling in their performances of difficult men that you'll gladly suffer. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'HehirMar 10, 2012
Footnote has two of the best performances I've seen in world cinema over the past year: One from Shlomo Bar Aba (apparently best known in Israel as a stand-up comic and stage actor), playing the aging, bitter philologist Eliezer Shkolnik, and the other from Lior Ashkenazi, one of the country's best known movie stars, as his son and rival, Uriel. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 8, 2012
It is a truism that academic arguments are so passionate because the stakes are so small. Footnote, a wonderful new film from the American-born Israeli director Joseph Cedar, at once affirms this conventional wisdom and calls it into question. Read full review
90
Boxoffice MagazineDavid EhrlichMar 4, 2012
Joseph Cedar's Footnote is a wry, wise little film that revels in the cataclysmic import of a life's most ostensibly trivial details. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanApr 26, 2012
Cedar is mostly interested in the father-son dynamics, and he cast excellent actors. Lewensohn, a famous Israeli theatrical director, makes his film acting debut, while the veteran Ashkenazi ("Late Wedding") handles his low-key role with bearlike grace. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMar 15, 2012
The main thing with Cedar's film, I think, is to approach it not as a farce, not as a drama, not as a mystery, not as any genre in particular. It's a comic nightmare, in the vein of the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man," and Cedar proves masterly at playing the stakes for real. Read full review
85
NPRMark JenkinsMar 9, 2012
The movie is not a story but a text, and Cedar is its playfully intrusive interpreter. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfMar 6, 2012
Cedar's idiosyncratically brilliant script also has a moral question at its heart: Is lying to spare someone's feelings ever justified? Surely the Talmud has a thing or two to say about that. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenApr 11, 2012
This is a film that skims the surface layer of politesse from human interactions and reveals us as the blustering bundles of ego that we all are. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsApr 13, 2012
Footnote is faintly comic, and director Joseph Cedar mines dark humor from the humiliations of identity checks and pecking orders. Read full review
75
Washington PostStephanie MerryMar 23, 2012
Most footnotes don't get a passing glance, but this one proves worthy of careful study. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMar 23, 2012
At its best when it gets into the cutthroat dynamics of academic competition, which are both horrifying and amusing. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithMar 9, 2012
Once it calms down and stops trying to be funny, it turns into a thoughtful and intriguing drama. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubAlison WillmoreMar 7, 2012
The love, jealousy, and stubborn pride of the relationship between Ashkenazi and Bar-Aba is the heart of the film, and that makes the deliberately uncertain note of the ending particularly frustrating. Read full review
75
MovielineStephanie ZacharekMar 7, 2012
What Cedar captures here is the way a father and son can be bound so tightly they almost choke the air out of one another. You can't exactly call it affection; it's that far more complicated thing we call kinship. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyMar 4, 2012
A father-son academic rivalry provides fodder for this caustic comedy set in the Talmud Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Read full review
70
Village VoiceKarina LongworthMar 6, 2012
Something between a comedy of everyday absurdity and a family tragedy pushed into the realm of the hyper-real, Footnote uses its characters' differing relationships to authenticity as the basis for an enigmatic riff on representation. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisMar 22, 2012
Footnote culminates with stirring gravity that you wish Cedar had the confidence - in himself, his material, and us - to sustain. Both Uriel's dilemma and his father's are unenviable, even as you understand the deep guilt, sense of conflict, and hubris this mix-up provokes. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMar 4, 2012
Jewish and academically inclined audiences worldwide will respond to numerous aspects of this unusual drama, although it is paradoxically both too broad and too esoteric for the general art house public. Read full review
60
VarietyJay WeissbergMar 4, 2012
Footnote is a decidedly male-centric film. Structurally, the picture is divided into named chapters that make for cute markers but give it the not-entirely satisfying feel of a jaunty satire. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerMar 4, 2012
Joseph Cedar's Footnote is a sour, rather unpleasant affair that hinges on acts of Jews behaving badly. Read full review
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