The Band’s Visit
by Catherine Lee

“Write what you know,” advice given to young writers, is useful advice for novelists and filmmakers. I don’t know if Eran Kolirin was ever given this useful directive, but his first feature film, The Band’s Visit, includes fond memories from his childhood and has a lived-in quality that feels authentic and natural.

The Band’s Visit is an understated and quiet film, set very far from the experiences of an American audience, so our confidence in what we’re seeing is essential. It keeps fresh our curiosity and interest in this very foreign collection of characters. The filmmaker’s sense of humor is also a big help.

The Band’s Visit strikes me as a quintessential example of a “foreign” film. It isn’t just that much of the dialogue is not in English, the landscape and experience are so unfamiliar, and the characters are so wary of each other; we do wonder what world we’ve been dropped into. But as the modest adventure of The Band’s Visit continues we see in the characters the motivations, problems, qualities and foibles that are familiar to all people.

The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, a group of nine police officers who play traditional Arab music, has been sent to Israel to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center. They arrive in very loud, very formal uniforms, ready to be cultural ambassadors, but there is no one to meet and greet them.

The band leader Tewfiq tries to make phone contact with various folks to find out what to do next and fails. The band is facing possible disbanding due to budget cuts, and this trip to Israel to help promote cross-cultural understanding is an important assignment for the band.

Tewfiq does not want this opportunity to shine to turn into a failure, so he assigns Haled, a romantic youth with the best English of the group, to find out how to get to their destination. But the name of the place they are going to is a bit tricky, and they end up in the wrong place. This confusion of names and languages – the band speaks Arabic and the station agent in Israel speaks Hebrew – is the little mistake that sets The Band’s Visit in motion. Throughout the film the characters talk past each other in their own languages, and try to meet in the middle with English. In The Band’s Visit even the English is subtitled, and in some cases the accents are so thick it is helpful. 

(An unfortunate aside, The Band’s Visit, an Israeli film, could not qualify for an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film because there is not enough Hebrew in the film. Apparently one of the mysterious rules for this category is that too many languages, too much English, or not enough of one language disqualifies a film. Both Hebrew and Arabic are spoken in Israel, so I’m not sure why the combination of the two foreign languages, both native tongues of the country of origin, don’t add up to enough foreign language. How can the Academy hope to inspire interest in foreign language films when it makes entrance into the category so difficult for films that can truly spark interest in the audience?) 

When the band arrives at the destination they think is the town of their performance, Tewfiq asks a café owner, Dina, where the Arab Cultural Center is. She replies, “Here there is no Arab culture. Also no Israeli culture. Here there is no culture at all.” She isn’t mean, just horribly matter-of-fact about how much of a wasteland her little community at the edge of the desert is. Dina does spark to Tewfiq. He has a solemn face and a stoic presentation. She is steely-eyed, but lovely and sympathetic. Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz play Tewfiq and Dina. Their wonderful performances are the heart of The Band’s Visit. The band has little money and no place to stay; there is no hotel in this dead-end town. Dina feeds them and organizes her “regulars” to take in the band members for the evening. There is no bus out of this place until the next day. 

Dina takes in Tewfiq, who insists that Haled come with him to keep him out of trouble. Several of the band members stay in the café. Others go stay in the home of a young family. Each group of band members has a different kind of experience. With awkward starts, the hosts and the visitors find quiet moments of understanding. We learn that Dina has dreamed of being out in the world more. We learn some of why Tewfiq is so closed off and cautious. We hear bits of an unfinished concerto. We hear the longing of a husband for the happiness he once shared with his bride. Egyptians and Israelis have a long history of war and tense peace, but these individuals ever so tentatively ignore that history and get to know each other, at least a little. 

With charm and humor, these characters live up to Eran Kolirin’s concern about the world. “A lot of movies have been made touching on the question of why there is no peace, but it seems fewer have been made about the question of why we need peace in the first place. The obvious is lost on us in the midst of conversations centering on economic advantages and interests. We traded true love for one-night stands, art for commerce and human connection, the magic of conversation, for the question of how big a slice of the pie we can get.” Dina asks Tewfiq at one point, “Why do the police need an orchestra?” Tewfiq shoots back, “We might as well ask, why does a man need a soul?” 

The oddest thing about The Band’s Visit is how little music is used. This is a band after all, and music is – sorry for the cliché – a universal language. At the end of The Band’s Visit we are given a glimpse of them performing at the finally found Arab Cultural Center. The emotions we haven’t seen in the conversations pour out in their performance. I hope the band survives the budget cuts.

Copyright 2008 Ad Media Inc.