Norman

[projekktor id=’27830′]

Norman is a drama film written and directed by Joseph Cedar and starring Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Michael Sheen, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Dan Stevens, Steve Buscemi, and Hank Azaria.

Norman Oppenheimer (Gere) lives a lonely life in the margins of New York City power and money, a would-be operator dreaming up financial schemes that never come to fruition. As he has nothing real to offer, Norman strives to be everyone’s friend, but his incessant networking leads him nowhere. Always on the lookout for someone willing to pay attention to him, Norman sets his sights on Micha Eshel (Ashkenazi), a charismatic Israeli politician alone in New York at a low point in his career. Sensing Eshel’s vulnerability, Norman reaches out with a gift of a very expensive pair of shoes, a gesture that deeply touches Eshel. When Eshel becomes Prime Minister three years later, he remembers.

According to Cedar, the film is a re-imagining of the “Court Jew” archetype. “The narrative of a Court Jew follows a classic structure. A Jew meets a man who eventually becomes a man with power, but he meets him at a point where his resistance is very low. He offers the man a gift or a favor, and when the man ends up being in power, he brings the Jew into his court. The Jew rises to become a senior consultant, until he becomes subject to a lot of antagonism, at which point the Duke or King, or whoever he is, has no problem getting rid of him. He’s a liability and it’s easy to get rid of the Jew.”

Norman is rated 14A.