The Ending (SPOILER ALERT) - Hearat Shulayim (2011) Discussion

[–] nyjack 12 years ago

Eliezer was too bitter; his revelation just let him figure out the truth of how he got the award and maybe he might do something about reconciling with his son later, but he went on stage and got the award he felt he deserved.

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[–] sjr1991 12 years ago

Really? We know that for sure? Then why don't we see it? Why don't we see the confrontation between Eliezer and his son, when he has to show off that he figured out the truth, and thus negating what he must know his son did for him? or why don't we see his speech of thanks at the event, in which he can't stop himself from revealing to everyone that he knows he's accepting an award he didn't win? or why don't we see him walk up to the presenter, take the award, and walk away without saying a word? or why doesn't he turn the award over to his son -- at the ceremony or afterwards -- having realized the sacrifice his son has made?

There are so many ways this movie could have ended -- and I'm not persuaded that having been bitter and depressed all these years, Eliezer was going to remain bitter and depressed -- rather than the way it did, which was just to stop, abruptly. I found the ending deeply unsatisfying and, I think, lazy on the part of the screenwriter and director. BTW, I thought "A Separattion" had the same fault at the end, but there was enough tension and drama leading up to that end, and the characters had more dimensionality than those in "Footnote."

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[–] nyjack 12 years ago

As the other poster says, the ending was left up in the air purposely. The Hollywood ending might have been nice but it would have totally destroyed Father's career and there is no inkling whatsoever that I saw that he was willing to do that. Even after having "won" the award he trashed his son's academic research and writings. He was certainly a very curious man and had had his doubts about his winning the award, looking for the registered letter that he was told he would receive and never did for example. And didn't the movie, I'm not terribly certain on this point, have him hear the caller on the phone call him Uriel at the very end? He knew his arch-enemy was on the prize committee. As far as we know, knowing that the award was really meant for his son was just the kind of vengeance he was looking for. So, I go for him going out on stage and accepting the prize with a big grin on his face. As for what happens later at home, who knows?

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[–] Rheli 12 years ago

It was pretty clear that Eliezer realized who had put him up for the award, who had written the commentary and that the award had not originally been meant for him. What he thinks about it may not necessarily need to be spelled out because we can pretty much guess: although the committee, out of jealousy did not originally award it to him, he did deserve it (in his and my opinion) and so he might as well go ahead and accept it as a fait accompli. After all, who's to know?
Presumably he will be more appreciative to his son after this.

Where's your crew?
On the 3rd planet.
There IS no 3rd planet!
Don't you think I know that?

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[–] 12 years ago

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[–] esbiker 12 years ago

I tend to agree with sjr1991. In my opinion the screen writer was lazy. There were so many ways this film could have ended, he probably thought he would let the viewers decide for themselves rather than provide an ending some people may not like. There was realy no good way this could have ended with the father having autistic tendencies. However, the job of a screen writer is to write a screen play, which includes the ending. This ending ruined the movie for me.

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[–] Rheli 12 years ago

I wouldn't assume it's the writer's fault. The way the "scissorhands" editors work these days, it's entirely possible that a fuller ending was not only written, but also shot, but removed in the editing process. There's even a hint of that when we see the flash forward of Eliezer standing up and yelling "I'm not a teacher! I'm a philologist!"

Where's your crew?
On the 3rd planet.
There IS no 3rd planet!
Don't you think I know that?

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[–] 12 years ago

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[–] mathew5000 12 years ago

It was an unusual choice, some people are bound to be disappointed. I think the idea is for audience members to decide for themselves what Eliezer should do, and what the character is likely to do.

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[–] mikeyflatley 12 years ago

wat a crappy endin. im glad i walked out

I live, I love, I slay, and I'm content

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[–] itchyfriend9 12 years ago

I don't have a problem with unresolved endings per se, bu I think this was a bad attempt at an unresolved ending. At their best, even unresolved endings can be a resolution of sorts, thematically if not dramatically (I'm thinking of Limbo and A Serious Man, but there are a lot of other examples I could come up with), but this one just felt incomplete altogether.

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[–] JSFound 12 years ago

I just got back from this great film.

I love endings on facial close-ups, and I love not resolved endings. They tell me the filmmakers trust the audience to provide closure. I understand your viewpoint though and I wondered as I left the theatre how many in the audience disliked the ending. For me, the whole movie is irony, and so we circle ironically back to the beginning where the father is not happy. He's just won a major award, but suspects the truth, and even if it wasn't a mistake and he got it legitimately, I don't think he still would be happy. The modern world confuses. I think I saw Stomp! in there. And his heart has shrunk, so that he's permanently crabby. So, I don't think he'd be happy unless he would take a hard look at himself and change from the inside.

That's the major theme for me: three generations of men deciding who they want to be. The father is almost hopeless; the son's speech toward the judges and his action of relinquishing the award is the most ethical thing in the movie, and still the son can be a major jerk to his wife and son, who is a blank slate, and still can be a more virtuous person than his dad and granddad. So the ending there appears to be a moment of revelation that the father recognizes that he is who he is, and it isn't good.

And by the way, in this situation, my own ethical shortcoming would be to totally tell. A father is a major dick to his son, and in public no less. That's going too far.

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[–] ofumalow 12 years ago

I agree with the OP--I can like open-ended movies but this one simply set up too many conflicts to end without really addressing ANY of them. We don't get a confrontation between father and son--or between the son and HIS son--or the (older) father and mother. The only confrontation that actually happens onscreen is between the son and the award chairman who basically stole/thwarted his father's whole career. This movie was exceptional for the first 3/4 or so, then it began to unravel a bit, and the ending was simply lazy and frustrating. I'm not saying ALL of the aforementioned confrontations needed to happen onscreen, but not even one? It just seemed like the movie looked at its watch, said "Oops! Time's up, sorry" and arbitrarily ended at least a few scenes too soon.

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[–] JW-7 12 years ago

Sorry, but all of you are just too wrapped up in nice neat packages. The ending left room for a lot of possibilities, and there are clues in the characters words, and their backgrounds, which could justify any interpretation or guess at how it would end. Any way it went would be perfectly satisfying so you don't really need to be told how it ends. My wife and I had a lengthy discussion after the movie about how it might end and what there was in their characters and lives that might have led to any of the endings. We didn't really need to see the ending. We were told enough for us to draw our own conclusions and not feel deprived that we weren't led by the nose. Father and son, their relationship, and our own shift in how we viewed the characters was skillfully told.

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[–] onex-ge 12 years ago

I agree. In fact I'll go further and say there is no ending. Nothing's going to change. Eliezer will get the award he thinks he's deserved all these years, and he'll still think that Uriel got to be a success by pandering to his students; Uriel will be completely disillusioned with his father, but he'll continue pandering to his students while secretly despising them. Josh will go into software or become a volleyball beach bum in Brazil after military service in the occupied territories. Meanwhile the elephant in the room will just get larger and larger.

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[–] JW-7 12 years ago

I love it. That is a perfectly plausible ending and one that we discussed. I think that Uriel was already disillusioned with his father, which began when he began to write the Judge's considerations, and realized that there was really nothing to say--that, despite his father's diligence, he had never really accomplished anything. That scene begs the questions: what is accomplishment? What is science? Do dedication and diligence, laudable attributes, rise to the level of the Israel Award? He also faced the disheartening truth that his father's archenemy probably was telling the truth, which is why he broke down and went back to him to beg him not to yank the prize from his father. Uriel's consideration for his father was taking place at the very moment that Eliezer was trashing his son's own reputation and career. The editing also skillfully showed how Eleizer's own lifelong discipline allowed him to uncover the distasteful (to him) truth.

Other possibilities: Eliezer disavows the award and tells the world that his son deserved it--a complete character reversal but consistent with his respect for the truth.

Eliezer accepts the award but makes a speech lauding his son and apologizing for his intransigence, without revealing the truth.

Eliezer's wife has a last minute conversation with him in which she tells him that, for his own self-respect, and hers, he must tell the truth.

Uriel can't stand it any more and gets up as Eliezer is receiving the award and shouts the truth.

As you say, nothing happens, but years later, after Greenberg's death, the committee, knowing the truth, relents and gives Uriel the award that he should have gotten.

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[–] andiam-1 12 years ago

This whole category is marked "spoiler alert," so I don't see why some sections of the previous poster were marked as such.

I agree with the original poster. I don't believe it's fair for a writer to leave it for the audience to decide how the conflict will be resolved. This ending struck me as a gimmick. It would have been better to let us know if the father made any public recognition of the son's role--maybe apologizing for his remarks or saying something to the effect that he appreciated his son's efforts to protect his reputation--remarks that would go over the head of the audience but would be understood by his son. Or maybe the father goes on berating the son in full knowledge of the fact that his son can't expose him.

Anything but this no-ending. Otherwise, I loved the film.

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[–] JW-7 12 years ago

So what's your problem? Didn't the spoiler alert vanish when you put your cursor over it like its supposed to? I didn't know it was a rule that if the thread said spoiler alert you weren't supposed to use it in your post. Thanks for letting me know that.

As to the content of your post, I feel that ending the film that way left you thinking, whereas if it was tied up in a neat package, that would not have been the case. What you posit as possibilities demonstrates that. You would have had not reason to speculate if they had spelled everything out.

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[–] journeybear 12 years ago

But I don't want to speculate as to how the story ends. It is not up to me but the filmmakers to decide what they want their work to mean.This kind of ending seems very popular with filmmakers these days, and it drives me nuts. I think sjr1991 hit the nail on the head - this is lazy filmmaking, a false attempt to make the film "artsy" or something like that - and I also agree with itchyfriend9's assessment. I don't care for issues left unresolved - I want the film to reach a conclusion, have a viewpoint, add up to something, rather than be left dangling, forced to make up my mind about what the story I have been following all along is supposed to mean. It's a cop out, and makes me feel I have just wasted my time. This time I saw it coming somehow, which ruined the last reel for me. I had been enjoying the film up to that point, even appreciating a rare film that explores intellectual pursuits in an intelligent manner. I kept hoping it wouldn't end unresolved, but it did. So it gets lumped in the groups of frustrating film experiences that have been listed so far, and I am glad it didn't win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. That would have served as approval for this indecisive approach.

Sometimes ending a film this way is fine. "Thelma & Louise" is a good example - we know they're going to crash and burn in the canyon, but we want them to soar into freedom. But this isn't such a case - it is far too unclear what will happen, and viewers are cheated out of a resolution that would indicate the filmmakers' intent. However they ended the film we would still have had a lot to think about. As it is, we are left with a dissatisfying non-conclusion that begs the question of what Eliezer should have done. I was hoping he would refused the award, thus exposing the hypocrisy of the selection committee - or perhaps just Grossman, his nemesis. But we'll never know, because the filmmakers proved to be cowards, in much the same way that Dikla defined Uriel's life philosophy.

It's a shame, really, This movie had a lot going for it up till then.

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[–] JW-7 12 years ago

Maybe the DVD will have an alternate ending with a nice neat bow on it, and then you can sleep at night.

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[–] filmfancy 11 years ago

Maybe the DVD will have an alternate ending with a nice neat bow on it, and then you can sleep at night.

LOL!

"And all the pieces matter" (The Wire)

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[–] Binba 10 years ago

It is not up to me but the filmmakers to decide what they want their work to mean.

It's both their job and yours.
If the filmmaker doesn't know what he means, it's experimental.
If the viewer doesn't need to figure out what it means, it's a popcorn film.

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[–] Binba 10 years ago

At the height of the scene where Eliezer realizes he's been duped, he sees one more dictionary definition of the Hebrew word "fortress": a trap. I think that in his twisted mind, it is some sort of a conspiracy by his son and/or the committee head to mock him even more. That would suggest more negative repercussions once he takes the stage...

maybe saying something to the effect that he appreciated his son's efforts to protect his reputation--remarks that would go over the head of the audience but would be understood by his son.

...or maybe the opposite: the father accepts the award, but makes a remark that goes over the audience's heads but retaliates against his son directly.

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[–] zenlancelot 12 years ago

I am getting a little bored with the automatic refutation that people have that wanting a resolution at the end of the movie is something films have evolved out of, and this HOLLYWOOD/NEAT PACKAGE/INSERT WESTERN IDEOLOGY,etc thing we have is something that makes us neanderthals, who are holding real artists back from making ambiguous statements.
Any random ending that i make up after I see an open ending, does not make THIS ending good and satisfying. Its just some thought-bubbles floating near my head, not the posited fact that the filmmaker has somehow expanded my horizons. What the filmmaker has actually done is betray the promise he made, had been making me for 100 mins. The promise that he was telling me a story that was worth my time.
Because I dont think there are anythings like open endings. All endings are ending, its the point where the storyteller/filmmaker decided he has said everything he has to say. The viewer and the filmmaker (for 100 mins) embark on a journey (being grandiose over here, but it goes with the metaphor) and this ending left me feeling stranded on the road, in the middle of nowhere, seeing the tailights of the car we shared our high times in disappear in the distance. He didn't drop me where he promised me he would.

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[–] JW-7 12 years ago

Seems like this is one of those"agree to disagree" things. You probably would have liked it better if they had one of those text graphics over the end telling you exactly what happened to each of the characters through the end of their lives. You know,"Uriel went on to become a successful fishmonger in Haifa for the rest of his life,ultimately franchising his business to a chain of 'Uriel's Fins And Gills." Me,I found the ending to be completely satisfying.

"The wrong kid died."

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[–] CitrusWithFuschiaTrim 11 years ago

See, I suspect that nearly everyone would be fine with people not liking the ending, but the urge to ridicule becomes almost overwhelming when the complaint is expressed in terms like this:

"What the filmmaker has actually done is betray the promise he made ... that he was telling me a story that was worth my time."

If you can't see how that stance is a result of one's expectations being conditioned by a seemingly quite restricted range of prior experiences, then you're not trying very hard. These are not universal laws and no such 'promise' was implicit in the mere fact of this film existing.
_____
I suppose on a clear day you can see the class struggle from here.

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[–] 11 years ago

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[–] lubin-freddy 12 years ago

These kind of posts always remind me of the scene in Stand By Me, where Teddy and Vern complain about the ending to Gordy's story. "Then what happened", Teddy asks, and then suggests "maybe he goes home and shoots his father".

It's interesting, by the way, that so many people complained about the over-resolution of the ending to another great Israeli film, Walk on Water.

I want to shake every limb in the Garden of Eden
and make every lover the love of my life

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[–] mothnm 12 years ago

Eliezer was self-absorbed, socially clueless, ambitious without doing the hobnobbing required to attain his goals so I think he would have accepted the prize,coming up with some sort of rationale. Uriel cared about the family and played to a crowd, and needed Grandson to continue the family success if he couldn't.

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