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The Band's Visit

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'It's the wrong time and the wrong place...' - there are so many excerpts of songs quoted in this movie and ones that stimulate memories of old songs that are very much in keeping with the title and the story, THE BAND'S VISIT (BIKUR HA-TIZMORET). A timely piece, this little film is about humanity and the possibility of communication by various means that overcome differences between cultures far better than treaties, summit meetings, and physical and verbal demonstrations. It is a thoughtful, engaging, and completely delightful success.

The Alexandria Police Ceremonial Orchestra with 'General' Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai) rigidly in charge provides music for occasions, and the particular occasion for this venture is a ceremony in Israel. Flying in from Egypt well dressed in light blue uniforms to perform for the new Arab Culture Center, the small band is not met as expected at the airport. Tewfiq attempts to resolve the lack of proper greeting and transportation by reserving space on a bus - a trip that mistakenly (through problems originating in language confusion) results in the band being dropped off in a small village Bet Hatikva. Frustrated with circumstances, the band is met with genial hospitality by café owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) who not only feeds them but puts the small band up for the evening. Dina has eyes for Tewfig and plans an evening out on the town with him - an evening that has its own surprises as each lonely person shares life circumstances. The other members of the band are placed in lodging with Dina's workers and at a dinner party discover similarities in their lives. Khaled (Saleh Bakri), a somewhat antagonistic ladies' man, spends an evening with a terrified young man Papi (Shlomi Avraham) on his first real date, and in the course of the evening introduces the fine art of courtship to Papi in a hilarious but touching scene.

The use of English as the common language between these Arab and Hebrew speaking people adds elements of humor as well as moments of sweetness as both the band members and the Israelis grow to know and care about each other. The conversations among each separate group are delivered in Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles and this degree of modified privacy becomes almost more humorous because of the bumpy language barriers shared with the audience. Everyone grows through this short visit and by the time the band departs for their correct destination by the next morning's bus, bonds have been made that preserve the dignity of nationality while overriding the limitations of differences peculiar to each country. This is a quiet, gentle, at times very humorous little movie that offers insights of how to attain global community for us all. Writer/director Eran Kolirin deserves special recognition for assembling and molding this excellent cast for this remarkable, genuinely compassionate statement about important issues. Grady Harp, August 08

The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra gets lost in Israel. After taking a wrong bus from the airport, this small police band from Egypt is stranded at a small, sleepy town in Israel. Tired and hungry, eight members of the band all clad in light-blue uniform decide to stay overnight at the place. Using this simple story, Israeli-born director Eran Kolirin (his feature film debut) has made a very amusing and charming film.

Israel-France-US film "The Band's Visit" relates a set of episodes about the band's members and the local residents. Nothing big happens here, just small things that happen between Israeli hosts and Egyptian guests, but all these small things matter in "The Bands Visit," a bitter-sweet tale that will make you smile in a traditional way, without being too political.

The most impressive part for me is about the band's rigid and stoic conductor Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai) and the restaurant owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), who is also an attractive woman (in red dress). Difficulties of communication still lie between them when he reluctantly accepts her invitation to dinner, but they slowly begin to reveal what is hidden deep in their heart to one another (and us) - after all Tawfiq may not be the only one who has been left stranded at this quiet town. The excellent performances from Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz are really fantastic.

Another memorable episode is an equally charming and almost silent one. It happens at the roller disco scene where one of the band's younger members teaches a timid local boy how to seduce a girl. It is a little gem and you have to see it for yourself to understand that sometimes silence is the best way to tell a good story.

The theme of the film may not be particularly new, and it must be said that this quiet film may require patience for some viewers. Still with the great performances from the cast "The Band's Visit" is a lovely little film with genuinely magical moments.

"The Band's Visit" is 87 minutes of perfection from writer/director Eran Kolirin. There's little dialogue, accounting in part to language barriers, but more due to the dearth of things to talk about in the forgotten outpost of Beit Hatikva. Moreover, its residents seem talked-out and beaten down. Beautiful but weary Dina (the wonderful Ronit Elkabetz) nails the essence of the town's residents when she says that their misdirected Arab guests - looking for the Arab Culture Center - will find "No Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all."

I'm struck by how Kolirin makes those few words matter so much. Over a dozen scenes are stuck permanently in my head a full month or more after our viewing. Two scenes in particular stand out:

- An indescribably well-played wordless piece where jazz hipster Haled (Saleh Bakri) leads an inept Papi (Shlomi Avraham) through his first encounter with a girl. Brilliant direction here by Kolirin.

- A brilliant scene in which band director Tawfiq (regally portrayed by Sasson Gabai) reluctantly reveals the reason behind his romantic reticence. The core of the scene - when Tawfiq says "You are a good women Dina, I am sure of it" - elicts a reaction from Ms. Elkabetz bemoaning a life spent worrying about silly things that don't matter now. It's stirring cinema.

So, now we add "The Band's Visit" to my growing list of Israeli films you must see:

The Syrian Bride
Time of Favor
Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi
Broken Wings
Late Marriage - Lior Ashkenazi & Ronit Elkabetz!!
Walk on Water
Yana's Friends

This low-key, seemingly slow-moving Israeli movie offers a lot to those willing to sit still for a while. The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) is something of an uncomplicated, good-natured story, but scratch the surface of all those awkward people-getting-to-know people moments and there's a poignant look at loneliness.

The eight members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra have arrived in Israel from Egypt to play at the opening ceremony of an Arab cultural center. But they mix-up the name of the city, get on the wrong bus, and wind up in a small Israeli town that seems plunked in the middle of desolation...all wind and dust, with a huge apartment complex not far away. (The real town is Yeruham, population 9,000, in the Negev desert. I doubt if the place gets many tourists, or will after this movie.)

The band is led by Tawfiq Zacharya (Sasson Gabai), a serious, strict, middle-aged man who speaks halting English. When the bus that dropped them off departs, the eight men stand holding their instruments and looking uncomfortable in their powder blue uniforms. Tawfiq finally walks across the highway to a small café where two idlers sit watching him. He introduces himself to the proprietor, Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), fortyish, confident, good-looking and so bored with her life that she sees these Egyptians as something of a challenge. They're in the wrong town, there's no hotel and there's no bus until the morning, so she feeds them and arranges for the band members to stay with some of the town's residents. She takes in Tawfiq and the band's young violinist and trumpet player, the tall and smooth Haled (Saleh Bakri). For the rest of the night we watch as coffee is sipped, dinners are eaten, awkward conversations take place (and some not so friendly ones) and liquor is sipped. Haled goes to a roller skating rink with two young Israeli guys and their dates and winds up showing the very inexperienced one how to comfort a weeping girl. Mostly, we get to know Dina and Tawfiq...Dina, with a careless life when she was younger, still something of a rebel against the conventions and boredom of the town; Tawfiq, reserved and dignified, who holds silently the knowledge of a terrible mistake he made before he was widowed. We're there as they share tentatively some personal history.

No, love doesn't blossom and we don't walk away thinking that if only people could get to know each other all the Israeli-Arab problems could be solved. We might be moved and entertained, in a gentle way, as some tentative friendliness arises, but more than anything we're touched by the loneliness, for different reasons, that Tawfiq and Dina carry around with them. Haled winds up helping each of them in very different ways, but without being aware of it. He's just a young guy who plays the violin and horn, loves Chet Baker, is something of a rebel and admires good-looking women.

When the bus comes by the next morning and the band prepares to board, we get the strong feeling that Dina and Tawfiq will remember their encounter, and might even be happier for it.

The Band's Visit is well described on Amazon's main page. An Egyptian band comes to Israel to play at an Arab culture center in a small town. They arrive at the wrong town and spend the night there, waiting for the next day's bus to take them to their performance site. In the meantime almost nothing happens, except that the Egyptians and the Israelis learn of their common humanity. Nothing 'happens', but they learn everything. The film is sweet, funny, heart-rending at times and cinematically perfect. Each group has its representative figures, the predictability of the varieties of the human spirit underscoring their true humanity and deep commonality. The film has been subjected to some political slings and arrows since there are both Israeli and Palestinian actors working together here. When the director was asked about this, at Ebertfest, he responded that his job is to create art and he has no time for politics such as this. This was the perfect answer. The film is deeply 'political' because it is deeply human, something for which the deeply political often have little time. The performances are very special and the film's warmth and beauty transcends the stark, lonely landscape in which they are revealed. This little film is now the largest-grossing Israeli film every exhibited in America. See it.

One of the most humane and psychologically nuanced films I have seen in years. I don't think the director had ever intended this rather short (and probably low budget) film to be a revelation. But it certainly is... at least, it was for this reviewer. The melancholy wind-swept landscape of an Israeli "middle of nowhere" (if such a thing can exist in tiny Israel) serves as a backdrop to the travails of a hapless band of Egyptian police musicians lost on a tour of Israel. Their chance encounters with residents of a desert Israeli town provide us with a low key but profound examination of human vulnerabilities, of the tenderness of our inner souls. And that Dina... Simply superb!

Unfortunately it seems that most of the reviewers have missed the point of this film- which is understandable, as when I initially first saw it, I missed the point too. It's very subtly expressed
and depends on an insider's understanding of Israeli society.

Expecting a tale of cultural rapprochement, of an underlying common humanity despite cultural differences, I was disappointed to find precious little bridge building taking place. I kept waiting for the moment of enlightenment, the turning point, a climax which never came, not even in the final sexual encounter. I left wondering what the point was.

Upon analysis, I realize that the film is not about Egyptians and Israelis meeting each other, and reaching accross cultural difference. The film is about Israelis looking for a part of themselves that has been lost.

The first clue is the location of the fictional town of Bet Hatikva: A dusty desert town in the Negev. The type of town that would have been initially settled by North African Jews, the parents and grandparents of the film participants. So we are not talking about people from accross cultures; we are talking about people from nearly the exact same culture! How did such a gap develop?

The second clue is language: The film was not admitted to the foreign language competition because too much of the dialogue was in English. But why are the Egyptians and Israelis speaking English to each other? This is not just a political statement- that neighboring countries don't know each other's language. This goes beyond that, if you realize that ARABIC was the first language of the parents of the Israeli film participants. (Remember how Dina recalls how the whole neighborhood used to shut down while everyone watched Arab movies on TV?)

The cultured Egyptian band members contrast markedly with the Israeli 'arsim (an Arabic word that has become Israeli slang for uncultured, and unsophisticated people, a stereotype often directed at North African Jews). How did these Jews wind up with "No Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all"??? Upon meeting the Egyptians, the Israelis sense a shadow of their lost selves, and sense a longing to fill it. Dina is not just a slut looking to bed an exotic stranger in uniform. She seeks a lost part of herself, and she seeks in sex, what she failed to accomplish in speech and in deed.

In an ironic twist, the film reverses the mythical role of the Jews in the world: In the diaspora the Jews were the wandering, the homeless, the sojourners who birthed two great religions and in many other ways imparted culture to their host societies. But in their homeland, in this little town of Bet Hatikva, it is the wandering Egyptians who arrive bearing culture, from their music to their guidance in matters of romance.

This is a film about Jews in search of themselves in the aftermath of cultural upheaval, in my opinion an unacknowledged source of many social tensions (class, ethnic, religious) in modern Israel today.

It's hard to imagine that a movie could be made about Arabs and Israelis without offending someone. "The Band's Visit" may accomplish that seemingly impossible task. Politics are invisible -- and that's one reason the movie is so entertaining.

An aging, ragtag eight-man Egyptian band is stranded in a desolate and dull town in Israel overnight. Without much in the way of money they depend upon the questionable goodwill of the local Israelis to feed and house them. The interaction between the Egyptians -- formal and dignified -- and the Israelis -- rough and tough, but good-hearted -- is explored slowly and meticulously. There's no excitement here, or flashy scenes. The movie holds your attention by developing an interest in the characters. It's amusing but not funny.

In a wonderful scene, for example, the neer-do-well of the band, a handsome young womanizer, teaches a painfully shy young Israeli boy how to romance his equally shy girl friend at a roller rink.

You wonder throughout the movie when the band is going to play music. Be patient. It does -- in the genre of classical Arab music, or so I understand.

Smallchief

This is a great little film - in a big way - full of surprising humor and warmth....and it offers hope that our similarities as human beings are more important than our differences. Every character in this film is memorable. One of the most charming movies I have seen in a long time

Other reviews here detail the story and the plot, so there is no need to repeat that. The Band of Egyptians ends up in a small town (small? I think the population must be less than 100 residents) for the night when they get off at the wrong bus stop and there is only one bus per day.

Originally I though that that it would have the Arabs lost in a big Israeli city with a different culture. But this small town is not the typical Israeli big city with its own cultural prejudices. This two is much more laid back. "Laid back" and "subtle" are two phrases that constantly came to mind as I viewed this quiet 87-minute gem of a film. No one rushes. There is no loud screaming or yelling. And there are moments when there are no words.

This film is really tri-lingual. Much of the dialogue is in English. When called for, the Israelis speak in Hebrew and the Arabs speak in Arabic. And it's not always consistent. When the dialogue is not in English, there are easy to read English subtitles in yellow. It's interesting that the final credits - which must go on for more than five minutes - are in Hebrew and Arabic with no translation as to which cast members played which roles. You will learn this, however on the 10 minute "Making of" featurette that, along with a "photo gallery" forms the "Bonus Features". There is no commentary. The "Making of..." doesn't add much, except to identify the MAJOR cast members.

I agree with the others that the scene at the roller rink is the most memorable one. It really stands out.

This film won lots of awards - and deservedly so - and should attract more fans as it hits DVD shelves later this month.

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"