Joseph Cedar may be one of Israel’s most respected dramatic filmmakers, but he was born in New York City, lived there until he was six, and returned as a young man to earn a graduate degree in film at New York University. Raised in Jerusalem and now based in Tel Aviv, Cedar has won growing acclaim for a series of dramas steeped in the culture and politics of his adopted home—most notably Beaufort (2007), which drew on his experiences as a teenage soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, and Footnote (2011), about the professional rivalry between a disgraced Talmudic scholar and his up-and-coming son. Both earned Oscar nominations for best foreign-language film, and Footnote grossed a respectable $2 million on the U.S. art-house circuit. Now Cedar makes his English-language debut with the excellent Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, a U.S.-Israeli coproduction set in Manhattan and featuring such familiar faces as Michael Sheen, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Steve Buscemi, and Richard Gere in the title role.
Gere is well attuned to this vulnerability, and he gives a lovely performance, gentle and ingratiating in the scenes where Norman befriends the handsome Israeli politician Micha Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi, the son in Footnote). After listening to Eshel speak at a conference, Norman trails him as he window-shops, stopping to admire an expensive pair of Italian shoes. Cedar, stressing the transactional nature of the friendship, shoots from inside a swanky shoe store, through a display window that frames their silent encounter, as Norman walks past Eshel, pulls up short, introduces himself, and strikes up a conversation about the shoes; within a minute the men are laughing, Norman has a hand on Eshel’s shoulder, and they’re venturing inside for Eshel to try on the shoes. Hoping to arrange a meeting between Eshel and Arthur Taub, Norman makes the fateful decision to buy the shoes for Eshel, though he gulps when the bill arrives at a whopping $1,197.
Directed by Joseph Cedar.
