The Band's Visit

source: The Band's Visit

This little police orchestra from Egypt arrives in Israel and gets lost. They end up in the most boring village you've ever seen. On the surface. Soon different kinds of relations starts, between different kinds of people. We are all individuals. This is not just a small-talk tale about the fruitful meeting between two cultures and two powers. It's also about loneliness and how people cope with it. There's the loneliness from being old, the loneliness from being sexually outspoken, the loneliness from being retarded when it comes to passion. It's both a very sad and hopeful movie. Perhaps the main theme is music and the consolation which is possible from it.

So, this is "The Band's Visit"..., well, let me tell you: You can have it. Let's start from the beginning: I saw it wearing headphones, and it was very strange to see these uniformed group of musicians walking a block away from camera, but hearing their heavy steps on the pavement making the same noise as the dinosaurs (or whatever their name is) that were walking in Jurassic Park: Every step sounded like if Godzilla was walking behind my back!! the same with the traffic noise, it was augmented about a thousand times sounding like the worst Kansas tornado behind my screen monitor. Now about the directing: Every scene is unnecessarily too long and every question issued by one of the actors takes the recipient about 10-20 seconds to answer, and this procedure is maintained throughout the whole film, and if they are not barely talking (none of them seems to be too fluent in the difficult art of conversation), then the long immovable takes become quite unbearable. Very-very irritating. The script is gray and unmemorable, dull, like all the characters save the woman owner of the Israeli restaurant, the only character with life in it, the rest are kind of zombies walking from left to right on the screen and then from right to left, till the end of the movie. All the men portrayed in this movie are as dumb as they come, and again, only the restaurant owner shows some intelligence in her eyes and liveliness in her manners. How can people be so dull!!! Are they saying in this movie that all policemen are that dumb and pathetic? well, I don't care a hoot, a total waste of time, of money, of everything (and now I have to go to the video store to return this copy).

The backdrop to my viewing of this film was that it was so highly rated, won awards, only being shown in a few theaters, etc. What I saw through my eyes was a classic oddball art-house film that supposedly says many things when it only really says one or two. I was glad to have discovered the lead actress, Dina, who I thought was really attractive and a good actress. I wasn't prepared for the subtitles, even though I should have been (my preliminary investigations didn't turn up any word about subtitles). I will tell you the main theme I got out of the movie, but, if you don't want to hear it beforehand, please continue on to another review. If you've already seen this small film, my understanding of its critical theme is that, when language and culture are stripped away as dividers, we can all do as Rodney King had hoped for and just get along.

In this surprising comedy, a blue costumed Egyptian Police orchestra gets misrouted in Israel on the way to play at the opening of an Arab cultural center in Petah Tikvah. They land in a tiny desert town, where Dina, an Israeli cafe owner, (played by a strikingly smoky voiced Ronet Elkabetz), disburses the eight musicians overnight among her bored regulars until tomorrow's bus comes. Of course, the conductor, Sasson Gabai, stays with her. Not much of a plot really, but the intelligence and composition of the film makes what I've seen from Hollywood lately seem like kindergarten. Israeli Dina disemboweling a watermelon for her two Egyptian guests, a morose Egyptian-Israeli after dinner men's chorus of "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess, romance at the Israeli roller-skate discotheque, two men talking by a sleeping child in the bedroom of a failing marriage -- each scene saved from treacle by the film maker's wit and pacing. As stereotypes and the enmity of decades fall by the wayside, Egyptians and Israelis alike endure difficulties of communication, autonomy, leadership, relationship, and isolation. No moment is rushed. No character trivialized. No irony ignored. No soundtrack tells us what to feel. Music and sounds in this film are source only. The band's music, arising as the credits roll, is glorious - the key, in fact, to something each of us, or them, so desperately needs: joy! The film is so well crafted my enjoyment of it was effortless. It seems an enormous amount of thought, care, and love went into "The Band's Visit". And this is precisely the message, told with enough humor to keep it fresh. Ordinary individuals encountering each other with honesty, respect, and the gifts of art, music and laughter -- how else to breach the gulf between these two, or any two, cultures.

This low key "dramedy" from Israel is about a police band from Alexandria, Egypt scheduled to play at an Arab Cultural Center in a particular Israeli town. They end up in the wrong town and spend the night as guests of a single Israeli woman and a young married Israeli man. Although the band consists of eight men, the screenwriter fleshes out only three of them. The main character is the band's leader, Tawfiq who mainly interacts with the film's protagonist, Dina, the single Israeli woman who tries to make the best of life in what she considers a boring town. There's also Khaled, the youngest member of the band who goes into town with a young Israeli guy and ends up coaching him on how to be more successful with women. And finally there's Simon, who ends up playing his unfinished "concerto" for Itzik, the young Israeli man trapped in an unhappy marriage. The film attempts to stress the common humanity of both the Israelis and the Egyptians as they awkwardly interact with one another. The only two characters who rise above sentimental stereotypes are Tawfiq and Dina. Tawfiq is first introduced as being a bit of an authoritarian, especially since he won't allow Simon to conduct the band and orders Khaled around as if he's a child. But later, Dina brings out Tawfiq's softer side when he confesses that his son committed suicide and his wife died of a broken heart; revealing that it was his own heavy handed methods of child-rearing that led to the son's suicide. One wonders what causes Tawfiq to be so impressed with Dina. She confesses while they have coffee in a diner that she's having an affair with a married man. Later at the end of the film, Tawfiq gets up in the middle of the night and overhears Dina and Khaled having sex. Nonetheless, he thanks Dina for her hospitality when the group leaves the next morning. Dina is impressive as a world-weary single still looking for love but again I question how she was able to open up shy Tawfiq in the space of one night. Khaled isn't all that believable as both "love counselor" and rebellious band member. Beyond the little comic moment when he shows Papi how to be successful with women at the skating rink, a few moments of tension with Tawfiq and the fleeting glance of him having sex with Dina, we don't find out much more about him. Even worse is the depiction of Simon and Itzik, who bond over Simon's unfinished musical composition. Itzik has a few comic lines about the difficulties of his marriage and Simon has nothing more to do than his play his clarinet. The other band members are mainly content to remain silent and let the three principals do the talking. Much of the conflict between the characters in this film is too "soft". It allows the filmmaker to suggest that Arabs and Israelis can overcome their differences since they are so alike. But people are more complex and the screenwriter fails to give his characters enough nuances and enough conflict for this drama to work on a deeper level. Nonetheless, the film keeps one's interest to the end and there are sufficient revelations (albeit underdeveloped) that make this film worthwhile seeing perhaps once.

Four of the seven band members just sit around looking bored, and that's exactly what my wife and I did too. For the first half of the movie. I don't know how the rest is because we fell asleep somewhere in the middle. The rules for reviewing a film state that the review must be at least ten lines long and I don't have anything more to say about it, so the rest is filler: dull, monotonous, uneventful, uninteresting, unexciting, uninspiring, unstimulating, jejune, flat, banal, lackluster, vapid, wearisome, tiring, tiresome, tedious, ho-hum, dullsville, dull as dishwater, soporific, sedative, somnolent, tranquilizing, narcotic, sleep-inducing, somniferous--is how I would characterize the film.

The band, an group of eight Egyptians looking slightly stilted and uncomfortable but always professional, are dropped off at the Israeli airport, but there is no bus to drive them. They eventually get one, but it drops them off in the middle of nowhere. They walk to a local restaurant/dive that's about as empty as the rest of the small town - it's the wrong town, of course, as one letter was off in the name of the town of the band-mates inquired about. So it's time to stay overnight in this sleepy little desert town before things get straightened out to their destination. With that simple premise, Eran Kolirin creates an atmosphere that seems like the awkward, piercingly funny but "low-key" (in other words not overly dramatic) characters in a Jarmusch film, and despite the 'small' nature of the story, that there isn't very much to go in its 80 minute running time, a lot can be explored through interaction. This is probably not a 'great' film, but it is a great example for those skeptical that an Israeli film has to have some political context or subtext or whatever. The only scene that has the hint of unease between Israel and Arab is an already warm, strange scene at a dinner table where an Israeli man recollects singing "Summertime" as everyone at the table joins in. There are looks exchanged here and there, but nothing to suggest unrest of the expected sort. This story could take place in just about anywhere. By aiming things towards the little details of people relating on terms of friendly interaction, of the light dances of affection like between the boy who "hears the sea" and the "gloomy girl" at the skating rink (probably the single funniest scene without a word spoken, all movement), the first-time director creates a little play on people who live and/or work in a marginalized part of the world. That doesn't mean they're poor or ignorant, far from it. But it's a sweet view into people we otherwise wouldn't know much about (after all, who makes light, wise comedies on the misadventures of a police band from Egypt?) The performances are endearing, the music has the ring of not taking much too seriously, and melodrama is kept at a low (if not, in the underlying sense, melancholy). Only a few scenes (like the running story strand of the officer and the other guy waiting at the pay phone) fall sort of flat based on the tone already sent.

I had extremely low expectations for this film, but even I failed to predict how nauseously sentimental, foolishly unrealistic, and poorly written it would be. All of the Israelis posting glowing reviews about this movie should be ashamed of themselves for praising such a low-quality product. I think according to those Israeli viewers, just because a movie is produced in Israel, it must be good. I'm originally from Israel but I will never hesitate to harshly criticize Israel's disgraceful cinematic efforts. This movie must be classified as a total failure for several reasons. First, it is unabashedly sentimental and clichéd. You have already seen this type of movie many times before. A group of characters from a foreign country visit another country and guess what happens? They are transformed by their visit, and similarly transform those with whom they interact during their visit. This is the type of story that is dreamed up by a 12 year old or a C-grade screenwriter but actually has very little to do with real life. Second, the characters are mere clichés and stock types and are not real at all. I didn't believe that a single character shown had anything in common with an actual human being. There is of course a rigidly serious Egyptian orchestra leader who develops an unfulfilled romance with a promiscuous, so-called "free spirited" Israeli restaurant owner. Then there is a socially awkward young Israeli boy who is of course tutored in the ways of girls by a fun-loving Egyptian youth. All of these sequences and scenes were so utterly detached from reality that I actually had to laugh. Essentially this movie does not contain even a trace of realism. Finally, the writing is absolutely horrible. I frequently cringed when the scriptwriter invoked singing sequences in which characters sang songs out of nowhere in front of total strangers. Does anyone do that in real life? Of course no one does. The dialogue between the characters is completely artificial and not once did it seem remotely realistic. I would give this movie a 0 out of 10 stars. Israel's filmmakers have shown once again that they are incapable of making a deep, insightful, or realistic film. There are only two excellent Israeli films that I know of: Late Marriage and The Syrian Bride. The Band's Visit, like so many other Israeli movies, is a disgraceful, sentimental production totally devoid of meaning.

With a strained formal demeanor and a face wrinkled with vulnerability, Sasson Gabai's bandleader is a direct descendant of Shaike Ophir's Policeman (Azulai) in the bittersweet Israeli movie of that name. This is not a bad ancestry to have, but for a character who is supposed to be Egyptian it's a little awkward. Today Egypt is a grumpy neighbor that has as little contact with Israel as possible, and Egyptians-- or anyone else-- could consider it presumptuous of us Israelis to bring out a movie about the reaction of an Egyptian orchestra to being stranded in Israel. Who are we to characterize them? But the movie was obviously made with an abundance of good will and the foreign press has been kind. The Band's Visit was nominated Israel's candidate for the Foreign Film Oscar, but it had to be withdrawn because not enough of the dialogue was non-English. (Perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of the film, other than a public telephone that inexplicably operates for free, was everybody's fluency in English.)