Israeli tries hand at American film
Joseph Cedar’s first English-language movie explores simply complex ‘Norman’
After watching the new movie “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer,” it’s not surprising to hear the Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar say that he doesn’t like “altruistic characters.”
“I either don’t believe them or I cringe at how simplistic they are,” Cedar said by phone from his home in Tel Aviv. “There’s something too sweet or straightforward about their journey in life.”
Given his predilection for the complex, when Cedar decided to write his first English-language film, following the international success of his 2012 satire, “Footnote,” he wound up creating in “Norman” a finely detailed character study about a status-seeking antihero who is anything but simple and would never be called sweet.
Richard Gere, cast against type, plays the socially inept title character, Norman Oppenheimer, the proverbial “guy who knows a guy.” Described in an opening scene as “a drowning man trying to wave at an ocean liner,” Norman is
a master name-dropper and shameless nudge, scheming new ways to insinuate himself into New York’s power elite by bestowing favors on people rungs above him on the social ladder.
Norman casually gives a pair of $1,000 shoes to visiting Israeli politician Micha Eshel (played by Lior Ashkenazi). Three years later Eshel is elected prime minister and, remembering his friend’s generosity, gives Norman his first taste of insider status. Inevitably, Eshel gets drawn into Norman’s schemes, and Norman trades on his famous acquaintance’s fame to leverage a bogus deal that threatens to undermine them both.
Cedar, 48, who was born in the United States and lived in New York until age 5, has been one of Israel’s most celebrated filmmakers since his 2007 war drama “Beaufort” established his reputation for deftly handling thorny subjects. This summer Cedar starts filming a limited series for HBO based on the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in 2014.
While Cedar was developing the character of Norman — Gere’s role, specifically, but more broadly, he says, “the Norman type, because we all know Normans or people who are Norman-ish” — he became intrigued by the historical and literary archetype of the “Court Jew.” Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Fagin in “Oliver Twist” and many real-life examples “are interesting to me because of the plot they usually fall into,” Cedar said. “They offer their services to gain influence, ultimately just to be thrown back where they started when it turns out they’ve become a liability.”
Cedar said Gere “identified with the role because of all the Normans around him,” the sycophants and opportunistic “friends” that are a by-product of celebrity. “Being on the other side of that dynamic was really interesting to Richard.”
On a more personal level, Cedar wanted to look squarely at “all these traits Norman has and is mocked for. He gets mixed up in something that could have been simple but becomes complicated once he touches it, and he pushes himself into places he’s not invited.” In one especially unsettling scene, Norman talks his way into a formal dinner party at the home of a financier played by Josh Charles, only to be brusquely shown the door.
“It’s almost taboo to put any of these traits on screen and then say the character is Jewish, yet part of my motivation was to figure out,” Cedar said, “why are these traits stereotypically Jewish and attributed to me? Some of them make me proud because I think it’s genius how Norman functions, but others embarrass me and are the reason why I think there’s anti-Semitism in the world. I wanted to try to figure it out, to deal with it.”
“Norman” opened in Israel in March to strong reviews. “Inevitably, Israeli audiences see the movie through the prism of current events,” said Cedar. “We have a prime minister (Ehud Olmert) sitting in jail because he was impeached for accepting gifts, similar to in the film, and now Bibi (Benjamin Netanyahu) is under investigation for accepting gifts, cigars and Champagne.
Cedar is curious to see how American audiences react to the ethical questions the movie raises about “the moral ambiguity of giving gifts” and if seemingly self-serving acts like Norman’s can be excused when covering up one’s loneliness and desire to belong.
Cedar also looks forward to introducing American audiences to Ashkenazi for the first time in English. The Israeli star was also in Cedar’s “Footnote,” about rival Talmudic scholars, and will play Yitzhak Rabin in Participant Media’s upcoming film “Entebbe.”
“Lior has a quality I find in American leading men of the 1950s,” he said. “Audiences never forget he’s a star, yet they identify with him emotionally and want to be in his shoes. I like an actor who doesn’t take himself too seriously. How can I explain it? Well, it’s like this: I get a little nervous when Daniel DayLewis is on screen, but I relax when Tom Hanks is there. Lior is the average Israeli — just a lot more handsome.”