The Band’s Visit
Directed by Eran Kolirin. Isreal. 2007. PG-13. 87 min.
Fri, Mar 28 thru Thu, Apr 10 -- Roll over to view showtimes.
Ever since premiering at Cannes last spring, Israeli director Eran Kolirin's picture "The Band's Visit" has been piling up awards around the globe, and in anticipation of a foreign-film Oscar nod, Sony Classics is opening it for a qualifying one-week run in New York and Los Angeles. (It'll be back for a national release in February.) I tend to dig in my heels and resist this kind of thing, and at first Kolirin's film — based on a minor news story about an Egyptian police orchestra that wound up in the wrong Israeli desert town some years ago — seems like it might be too lightweight and insubstantial, a fantasy vacation from the unpleasant political realities of Arab-Israeli relations.
In fact, if you stick with it, the story of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra's visit to the dusty nowheresville of Beit Hatikva (when they're actually looking for Petah Tikva) has an irresistible tragic and romantic undertow. Under the command of Tewfiq (played by the Israeli actor Sasson Gabai), a courtly, sad-faced widower who clearly feels the world he once knew slipping away under his feet, the police band are strangers in a strange land, crossing the frontier of the cold and formal 30-year peace between Israel and its most formidable former enemy. When no one meets them at the airport, this motley group of traditional Arab musicians in powder-blue dress uniforms are forced to muddle along on public buses, with a little English and almost no Hebrew, while trying to uphold the dignity of Egypt, their crumbling hometown and their underfunded department. (Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com)
Click here to continue reading Andrew O'Hehir's review on Salon.com.
Click here to read Manohla Dargis' review in the New York Times.