A man who knows how to wheedle

Richard Gere takes a risk with Norman, a movie about a wannabe Jewish big shot. Surprisingly, it pays off.

Richard Gere seems to welcome risk. I say this based on movies such as Time out of Mind (2015) in which Gere played a mentally ill resident of the streets and also because of Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer. In his latest movie, Gere -- an actor hardly known for ethnic portrayals -- plays Norman Oppenheimer, a persistent Jewish man of enormous aspiration and very little capital. Norman does, however, have one gift: He's nothing if not persistent. He can't be shamed or deterred.

By the conclusion of the movie, Norman has overreached in terms of a plot that involves the prime minister of Israel and a possible peace settlement in the Middle East. If you can forgive Israeli writer/director Joseph Cedar for such inflation, you'll find an amusing story about a man whose entire life seems to have been devoted to exaggerating his connections to the rich and powerful. Norman knows how to wheedle.

Joining Gere in what's presented with the frolicking spirit of a caper movie are Michael Sheen (as Norman's nephew); Steve Buscemi (as a rabbi whose congregation is desperate for funds), and Charlotte Gainsbourg (as an Israeli investigator).

Divided into acts separated by title cards, Norman buzzes along pleasantly as we're exposed to Norman's first hustle. He tries to wangle an invitation to an exclusive dinner by developing a relationship with an Israeli deputy minister (Lior Ashkenazi). The minister resists, but ultimately decides that there may be something genuine about Norman.

It also doesn't hurt that Norman, in an effort to impress the fellow, buys the deputy minister a pair of shoes that costs more than $1,000 or that the deputy minister regards Norman as someone who boosted his spirit during a low point in his career. Norman knows something about low points; his life seems to have been at a perpetual low point.

Norman wears the same camel-colored overcoat throughout the movie, doesn't seem to have a home, and conducts his business by ducking into quiet spots around Manhattan to make phone calls. He's always trying to worm his way into high-rolling company, and eventually does make the score he's dreamed of -- but even that gives him only a tenuous grip on the ladder of upward mobility.

Thanks to Gere, Norman shows moments of self-awareness that sometimes push him toward pathos, and there's something believable about Norman's desire to connect people -- even if he happens not to know the person to whom he promises an introduction.

Some of Cedar's scenes are over-stylized, but he gives his movie a tonic spirit, which (I think) means we're not supposed to take it too seriously. That's a good thing because Cedar's picture of New York's Jewish community, or at least its economic upper echelon, isn't entirely flattering.

I wouldn't have thought Gere could play a wannabe macher (Yiddish for someone who gets things done), but he's on target. For him, Norman was a risk worth taking.

Finding the universal in the obscure

Father and son both are Talmudic scholars, but they're also at odds in Footnote, a movie that tests their very souls.

The Israeli movie Footnote puts its characters into a vice and squeezes until it hurts. Director Joseph Cedar, who also wrote the screenplay, deals with a host of ethical issues embedded in a testy, competitive father-son relationship. To further complicate matters, this particular father and son happen to ply the same trade: They’re both Talmudic scholars.

Talmudic scholarship hardly sounds like the basis for an exciting movie, but if you give Footnote a chance, you’ll soon realize that it’s a story about what can ensue when a son enters the family business and surpasses his father -- not an impossible or uncommon situation aside from the fact that this time the father is an obsessive scholar who has spent this life attempting to prove a single point, only to be eclipsed by another scholar and then by his son. Footnote finds novel ways of dealing with the kinds of tensions that sour a relationship that, perhaps more than any other, plays a key role in defining manhood.

Cedar, who previously directed the combat film Beaufort, this time embeds his story in a different kind of battle, the ruthless competition that often ripples through academic circles, where -- as the old joke has it -- the conniving is great because the stakes are so damn small.

Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi) is a much honored scholar, whose approach to research tends to be cultural and intuitive. Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba), Uriel’s father, is a meticulous, fact-oriented researcher who’s contemptuous of the way in which his more successful son conducts his scholarly business.

But here’s the rub: Uriel has been honored for his work while Eliezer never has received the acclaim he believes he deserves. When Eliezer is told that he’s going to be awarded the prestigious Israel Prize, he feels as if a life of rejection is about to be vindicated. A dedicated philologist, Eliezer finally will emerge from shadows that he believes have been cast over his career by jealous detractors, not the last of which is the devious Professor Grossman (Micah Lowenstein).

No fair telling more, but know that Cedar’s sharp and lively movie puts father and son into a moral quandary that tests each man’s deepest principles and threatens to undermine the entire psychological basis for each man’s character.

Sounds heavy, I know, but Cedar -- particularly in the early going -- dishes out the story in playful, spirited chunks. Only gradually does he abandon an overtly comic tone.

Cedar seems to have no special fondness for academia. A meeting of a prize-awarding committee staged in a room the size of a broom closet blisters with comedy and conflict. Amit Poznansky’s score can have a near-antic quality, and Cedar sometimes uses chapter titles to set up a sequence, thus allowing us to maintain perspective while the character’s are rapidly losing theirs.

Cedar is particularly attuned to the absurdities that abound in the quest for recognition and status, even as they’re reflected in the omnipresent face of Israeli security, uniformed guards and metal detectors.

The movie’s title derives from the fact that Eliezer’s great achievement involves having been named in the footnote of his mentor, an important scholar. For Eliezer, this apparent trifle has taken on gargantuan, life-justifying proportions.

Amusing and provocative, Cedar’s movie should not be mistaken for a footnote in the history of Israeli cinema; it’s a major addition, a work of incisive, biting humor and acute observation.