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Bikur Ha-Tizmoret (2007) More at IMDbPro »

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43 comments in total

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48 out of 56 people found the following comment useful :-
A touching film about what makes us similar as humans, 6 October 2007

Author: (guylevi@hotmail.com) from Israel

I liked this movie. As a viewer, I was subjected to a wide range of emotions during this film: joy, frustration, embarrassment, delight and so on.

One must understand that Israel and Egypt had been long time enemies (until the peace agreement in 1979) and that Israeli Jews and Arabs have very different views on so many matters. Within this context the humanity of the film really shines. People of such different backgrounds are basically the same; Same hopes and aspirations, same fears and frustrations etc. The same things make all of us tick.

This film is also about strangers and others. And how we can help one another. The scene with Haled and the Israeli boy and girl in the skating rink is, my opinion, classic.

enjoy

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39 out of 42 people found the following comment useful :-
Band Visits, You'd Want Them to Stay, 24 January 2008

Author: janos451 from San Francisco

In an ocean of predictable movies, "The Band's Visit" is an island of bliss. When you see the advertising about the story of an Egyptian police band getting lost in Israel, you're likely to roll the film instantly in your mind - conflict, hatred, perhaps some awkward humor, and a forced bit or two of vague optimism about the future.

Forget all that, it's some other movie. This one is free and clear of anything set, routine, obvious, predictable. "The Band's Visit" is about people - mostly awkward, all real, well- and ill-behaved in turn - and not about agenda, ideology, politics. It's an unsentimental "people movie" (remember when Hollywood used to churn those out?), enormously likable, a treasurehouse of humanism.

"Visit" is also a film you have to work with. It's not dumped on the audience in its fullness by its writer and (first-time) director, Eran Kolirin. Action is slow or nonexistent, dialogue is halting, silences are rampant. And yet it all works so well: even if you have never heard Egyptian music, when the band finally plays (as the end-credits roll), you're guaranteed to groove on it.

Kolirin is a writer and director of great economy. The characters of and relationships between the eight band members - in their powder blue, Sgt. Pepper-wannabe, uniforms are revealed through a word here, an expression there, and pretty soon, you really know them... except that later you realize you didn't.

The head of the band, Tewfig, is an officious, prissy, downcast, silent figure, and yet as the camera stays on him a great deal of the time, slowly you are getting used to him, and when he finally puts together a couple of full sentences, you may feel acceptance and even appreciation.

It is at this point, far into the movie, that you understand why Dina is pursuing him. Dina is the attractive - if blowsy - owner of a small cafe in the Israeli desert town where the band is stranded. There is much, much more to "Visit," but just watching the Tewfig-Dina story, and reveling in the performances of the two actors, is well worth the price of admission.

The band leader is Sasson Gabal, and I must admit being incredulous finding out after seeing the movie that he is a famous Israeli actor. Not only does he appear authentically Egyptian, but when starts singing an Arabic song - oy! Dina is Ronit Elkabetz, an actor so fine that you'd never suspect her of being one; what you see on the screen is the character, totally believable.

"Visit" is a rare film, one that keeps running in your mind long after the band strikes up.

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45 out of 54 people found the following comment useful :-
What a surprisingly fab movie, 3 January 2008

Author: Rob Groves from Malmesbury, England

As a dedicated husband of a BAFTA voting member, we trawl through 100+ DVD's at this time of year. The Hollywood movies all blur into muchness, but then this film comes along without any fancy marketing blurb, no fancy box, just a DVD in a plastic sleeve. We put it in and said we would give it 10 minutes, and spent the next 100 minutes or so spellbound and laughing our socks off! The acting was simply wonderful, the comic situations and timing were redolent of "The Office", and the political analogies were intriguing, The soundtrack was the best of any 2007 movie imho. It gets our nomination for Best Film, Best Direction, Best Editing, Best Soundtrack, with further nominations for the "Dina" and "Tewfiq" actors plus a vote for others in the band in the supporting actor category.

Try to see it if you can!

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35 out of 42 people found the following comment useful :-
The Band's Visit is pure magic, 22 October 2007

Author: iandedobbeleer from Belgium

Eran Kolirin is a name to watch out for. This film maker is simply brilliant. In the band's visit he tells a quite simple story, but not without pulling a trick here and there and believe me, he's not a one trick pony. Actor performances are subdued and very truthful making the movie a story of unpersued dreams that goes straight to the heart. It's warm melancholy mood never gets heavy or painful cause it's countered so wittily with scenes that make you smile from ear to ear. To top it all off there's well chosen music, honest photography and clever camera direction. The Band's visit tells of a classic mix-up, but without ever being cheap.

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29 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
Really well done, 23 November 2007

Author: jim stevens from United States

A movie that should be getting lot more press.

Enjoyable and bit quirky to see the kinds of situations people get into, that are much like we may experience anywhere else in the world.

Others have laid out the plot well and nothing more needs to be said about how the story develops.

I found two scene in this movie the kind that one must remember, rather like the many one may recall from Bogart in Casablanca.

The exchange at the phone and the scenes at the skating rink are precious and very well acted.

This is a movie I recommend seeing and then putting into memory to come back and see again and again just for the pure pleasure of a well developed comedy.

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24 out of 27 people found the following comment useful :-
Small but wise, 24 February 2008

Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C.

A fully uniformed Egyptian police band arrives in Israel to perform at the opening ceremony of a new Arab Cultural Center but no one shows up to meet them at the airport. Lonely and tired, they end up taking the wrong bus, ending up in Bet Hatikvah, a lonely outpost in the Negev that, according to one of its residents, not only doesn't have a cultural center but has no culture. Unable to get transportation until the next morning, the band agrees to stay overnight at a local restaurant run by Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), a free-spirited but lonely Israeli restaurateur who longs for companionship.

Eran Kolirin's A Band's Visit is the story of the small connections that bring people together. Israeli's submission as Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (rejected because much of its dialog is in English), it is about what some of us have lost in modern society – the ability to reach across cultural, political, and language barriers to connect with fellow human beings. Over the course of the evening, the Israelis and the Egyptians approach each other tentatively and little by little, the staid Egyptians open up to their Israeli hosts, finding some common ground exemplified in a spontaneous dinner table rendition of George Gershwin's "Summertime".

When the two groups begin to get to know each other, they find that beneath the language and cultural differences, they are simply people - full of joy and sadness, friendship and loneliness, connection and loss. Tewfiq (Sasson Gabal), the conductor of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, is formal and rigid in his demeanor but is able to strike up a friendship with Dina (Ronit Elkabetz). After some awkward silences, the melancholy conductor reveals details of tragic losses in his family and how he feels that he is to blame. Another band member, Khaled (Saleh Bakri) decides to accompany local Papi (Shlomi Avraham) and his date to a roller skating rink. In a memorable scene, Khaled offers the socially backward Papi some instructions on courting his shy girl friend.

In another moving sequence, band member Simon (Kalifa Natour) plays a lovely but unfinished composition for the clarinet for Itzik (Rubi Moscovich) who tells him that he should end the piece, not with a traditional showy display but with what is there for him at the moment, "not sad, not happy, a small room, a lamp, a bed, a child sleeping, and tons of loneliness." A Band's Visit is a film about Israeli's and Arabs but without the usual backdrop of boundary disputes, the peace process, or the religious divide, even avoiding the clichés about how music is a universal language. It is a small film but wise in its understated depiction of humanity's common bonds, slow-paced but held together with a sensitive charm.

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27 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
The Band Visit , Original Comedy, 19 October 2007

Author: Samuel Cohen from Israel

Very Original and most enjoyable Comedy. The Band from Alexandrian Police comes to Israel and goes to Beit Tiqva instead of Petah Tiqva by mistake. Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz play an excellent comedy with a human touch. Beit Hatiqva is a far out town that has one bus a day in the desert. The Residents are originally from Arab Countries and Culture. High Unemployment and Boredem in this far out town. Sasson Gabai plays Tawfik the Band Leader. Sasson is not Egyptian but manages to play the part including small gestures of Middle Class Egyptian Officers. The Rest of the cast are good too. All though the film is very funny there are hints to serious issues. In our fast paced emerging market Society, People are left behind. The Band is a good Old Fashioned Band. Beit Hatiqva is a forgotten town like many in Israel. Most of the movie is in Arabic and English and little Hebrew. Go and see this Human Comedy.

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15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
An enjoyable film, 26 October 2007

Author: RKBlumenau from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

An Egyptian Police Band has been engaged to perform at an Arab Cultural Centre in Petah Tikvah. They descend from their bus, resplendent in their blue uniforms and rather stiff and ill at ease to be in Israel. It turns out that their bus has deposited them just outside Beith Ha-Tikvah, in the middle of nowhere, and there is no one to receive them. Beith Ha-Tikvah not only has no Cultural Arab Centre, but according to Dina (a young Israeli woman stuck there) not much culture of any kind, nor, for that matter, a hotel where they can stay until the next bus out on the following day. Dina arranges for them to stay the night in various local homes. The Egyptians are (with the exception of one member of the band) embarrassed and painfully polite, and the rest of the film shows mainly how Dina (mainly) tries and eventually succeeds in getting them, and especially their captain to relax a little. I think the film, getting a lot of laughs out of pointing up the contrast between the relaxed Israelis and the constrained Egyptians, is rather patronizing towards the Egyptians - one can just imagine how an Israeli film maker would portray an Israeli band if the roles were reversed! - but, other than that, the heart of the film is in the right place, aiming to show their common humanity and their common suffering (and the suffering of the Egyptian captain and the Israeli girl have NOT been caused by politics or war, but have to do with their private lives.) And, as a contrast to the embarrassed Egyptians, there is also a young inhibited Israeli boy who has to be taught by the one relaxed Egyptian how to approach a girl. The film is amusing, sometimes touching, sometimes a little sentimental. The performances of Ronit Elkabetz as Dina and Sasson Gabbai as the Egyptian captain are superb.

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21 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Our view of their view of us, 19 October 2007

Author: Nozz from Israel

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.)

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
You Speak. You Don't Speak, 2 March 2008

Author: David Ferguson (fergusontx@gmail.com) from Dallas, Texas

Greetings again from the darkness. Stellar film from rising star, Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin. This film offers the beautifully delivered message that regardless of our culture, we all want to be connected to another person. Other than the language we speak, we really aren't so dissimilar.

The Egyptian Police Orchestra is stranded on their way to play at the opening of an Arab Culture Center. The language barrier causes them to be stuck in a one-horse town with a similar type name. What follows is a touching story and terrific film-making. So much is communicated with so few words.

There are three of four amazing scenes. My favorite is probably the funniest in the film. At the roller rink, one of the band members assists an awkward local with the proper technique in consoling a girl whose feelings he has hurt. It is funny and touching and moving and insightful all at once. The band leader's scenes with Dena, the beautiful and lonely restaurateur who takes the band in for the evening, are so emotional and sincere that I kept wanting to scream at them both! Just great stuff.

I look forward to more from Eran Kolirin and it is very sad that this film was disqualified in the Foreign Language category due to the determination that too much English was used. Still, it doesn't change the fact that this is a terrific movie and story.

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