Footnote
Hearat Shulayim

Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar's exploration of the tensions and unfairness of academia is a funny and absorbing comedy-drama about how the narrowest field of interest can sometimes produced the biggest of grudges.  The story is about rival Talmudic scholars who are also father and son.  The father is an old-school purist who is disliked by his colleagues and the son is rising star in the field who feeds off the recognition of his peers. By juxtaposing the university and domestic settings, the film humorously points out how much family dysfunction mirrors the petty egomania and power trips of the scholarly world; and Cedar is able to reach universal truths by focusing on the minutiae of academic infighting and grafting parallels directly onto family dynamics.  The directorial choices are clever and unexpected for a light comedy like this.  The opening scene lets you know this is going to be a well-made movie, and the rest of the film does not disappoint.