Footnote is a really good movie - but what's with that ridiculous musical score?

The recent Israeli movie, Footnote (writer and director, Cedar), tells a really good, concise story of father-son rivalry and competition, within a context very unusual, at least unusual in American films: both father and son are in the field of Talmud studies and philology, the father more of an old-fashioned, stuffy academic who's got a pretty high position in academe but has never been fully recognized or rewarded (he thinks) and has published little (the joke is that his greatest recognition is being cited in a footnote by a legendary Talmud scholar); the son is more up to date and much more widely published, and the father, instead of paternal pride, feels seething jealousy and depression. (Spoilers here): Plot gets in motion when father gets a call telling him he's won the Israel Prize (something like a National Medal, I think), but we soon learn that the call was mistake, it was actually the son who won the prize, and the committee calls on the son to set things right with his father, which leads to many complications. Part of the beauty of the film is its avoidance of easy answers and happy conclusions: the father indeed learns that the award is not rightly his, but the movie ends with his accepting the award and with he relation with everyone in jeopardy: his family knows he took something not rightly his, the son is even more embittered. The movie is not kind to academics in any form - the logrolling and politicking of academic awards exposed for what it is, in case anyone out there ever thought these things were given out on the basis of merit. Footnote is a very dark movie, with many interfamily scenes of high drama worthy of Pinter or O'Neil, so what's with the ridiculous up-beat, intrusive musical score? Was the director trying to lighten his difficult material to make it seem more jaunty or palatable? Did he think the contrast in moods would give the film an edge? Is this stuff funny in Israel but not in the U.S.? Or was it just a horrible decision - a score that nearly ruins the mood of an otherwise very strong film?