The Band’s Visit (Eran Kolirin, 2007): Israel, France, USA

Reviewed by Richard Feilden.  Viewed at The Riviera, Santa Barbara

We live in a world where bigger is better and nowhere is this more obvious than in the emissions of the Hollywood behemoth. Huge budgets, huge stars, huge effects and huge stories are hugely popular in the slurry of torture porn, gross out comedy and CGI extravaganzas that California discharges onto our screens. What chance is there for a little film? One that is small in scope, budget and pizzazz? One which, in a fit of self depreciation that speaks strongly to the Brit in me, opens with a caption announcing that the story about to be told is of little importance? Every chance, assuming that film is writer/director Eran Kolirin’s debut, The Band’s Visit.

The film tells the tale of an Egyptian police band, invited to travel into Israel to play at the opening ceremony of an Arab cultural center in Petah Tikva. This marching band is held in tight regimentation by their precise, clipped, proper conductor, Lieutenant-Colonel Tawfiq Zacharya (Sasson Gabai). He is struggling to keep the band together in the face of bureaucratic threats to the outfit and internal struggles between the wildly different personalities it contains. Simon (Khalifa Natour), a frustrated composer, desperately wants the chance to conduct the band before it is disbanded whilst Romeo Haled (Saleh Bakri) just wants to have fun with the ladies – aided by his uniform which, he proclaims, makes him look like Michael Jackson! When a miscommunication leaves the band stranded at the airport, they try to make their own way to the center, but they end up in the cultural wasteland of phonetically similar Bet Hatikva where, as café owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) tells them, there is no Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all! When it becomes apparent that the band is trapped in Bet Hatikva for the night Dina arranges for them to be put up for the night and the stage is set.

What follows is one of the gentlest films I have seen for a long time. Never cloying, never forced and never vulgar, it manages to treat all of its characters with respect without sacrificing honesty in its depictions of them. Dina, all raven hair and swaying hips, is a paragon of self reliance and openness who stands in wonderful contrast to Tawfiq. He has more in common with the organized desolation of the landscape cinematographer Shai Goldman has rendered. He is a painful echo of the lamp posts that stand in perfect order along the dusty road through town, doomed to stand still, perfectly presented, whilst the rest of the world moves on. Yet he manages, in his crisp, powder blue uniform, to bring a little color into Dina’s life.

The comic moments come with refreshing regularity, keeping the film from descending into sentimentality. Of particular note are a birthday dinner scene punctuated with exquisite silences and impromptu singing, and a seduction-by-proxy at a roller-disco (yes, Bet Haptikva is that culturally barren!) which demonstrates a mastery of silent physical comedy which, as others have noted, would not be out of place in a Chaplin film.

Notably absent from this film is any obsession over the conflict that raged between the nations that these people belong to. A band member covers a picture of a tank on the café wall with his hat, as if to inform the audience that this is not an issue that will be raised here. This is a story about people, not countries. It is a reflection on the inadequacy of words for real, heartfelt communication. In a world where gesture, touch and the music of a concerto or an unknown tongue have been replaced by blogs, emails and text messages, it is a message worth hearing. So stop reading this review. Take someone by the hand and go with them to watch the not-very-important The Band’s Visit.