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.

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.

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.

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We know there is going to be trouble for the arriving members of the Egyptian orchestra, when they are not met at the airport. To make matters worse, they pile into a bus that takes them to a place, so isolated, that for all practical purposes they have gone to another planet. The Israeli town is in the Negev and has little life on its own.

The orchestra's leader, the proper Tawfiq, goes to get help when they get off the bus. The only thing in sight is Dina's cafe, where nothing seems to happen. Dina, who is skeptical at first, realizes the plight of these men, stranded until the next day in that isolated spot with practically no money, decides to feed them soup and bread. Dina, who is a lonely woman who has seen better days, decides to take Tawfiq and Haled to her own home and bullies two men that hang out in her cafe to take the others to their relatives.

Dina, after taking the men to her own small apartment, decides to take the men out to a small eatery. As she gets to know them, she begins to develop a fondness for the older musician, who also feels the attraction, but he is too polite to do anything about it. Following the night in the small town we watch as the band walks out in formation to where they will be picked up.

Eran Kolinn, the writer and director of "Tbe Band's Visit", created an intimate portrait of lonely people coming together because of circumstances beyond their control. There is also an undercurrent message about how bitter enemies can come together when they really know each other. Talking seems to dispel old fears since we all are the same no matter where.

The film is enhanced by the quiet dignity of Sasson Gabai, who plays the band's director. He plays Tawfiq with such flair that he wins us from the start. Ronit Elkabetz is seen as Dina, the woman of a certain age, now stuck in that forsaken place. She lives a lonely existence in that forsaken place that she is grateful for the distraction of the stranded musicians and sees a possibility of some bliss even if it's short-lived.

Eran Kolinn is a talent that will go to bigger and better things because he shows he can do it, judging from his work in this winning film.

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.