The Band’s Visit

"My inspiration can from an image I had in my head," said director Eran Kolirin. "I pictured a tough Arab man—a man in uniform—singing a song that had been trapped inside of him." There is no better way, really, to describe The Band’s Visit. It is a starkly beautiful work that carries all the tension of a trapped song. This tension and the awkward channeling of emotions by the characters is really what the movie is about. The plot is more of an afterthought, but in a good way.

What happens is simple enough. An Egyptian police band (The Alexandria Ceremonial Orchestra, to be precise), arrives in Israel to play at the inauguration of an Arab cultural center, only to discover that they have been completely forgotten. No one shows up to meet them at the airport, so they plow ahead by themselves and end up lost in a desolate village somewhere in the deserts of Israel. This is where they meet Dina, a woman with a personality much too big for the tiny town she lives in, and a smattering of other poignant characters.

It is truly the characters that make the movie. We meet a hodge-podge of interesting personalities throughout the film, some of whom only have a few lines but are memorable nonetheless. There is the man who waits every night for his girlfriend to call him on the village pay phone, the young man who is so afraid of women that every time he is around them he "hears the sea" in his ears, and the frowning turtleneck-clad teen known to us simply as "gloomy girl." Then there is the colonel.

Colonel Tawfiq Zacharya is the hardened, dignified leader of the Alexandria Ceremonial Orchestra who stands up straight and demands order and discipline from his group of less-than-dedicated orchestra members. However, Zacharya is more of a poet than an officer. As the movie unfolds, we are introduced to the softer side of a man that has been plagued by hardships. Under his grizzled exterior, we find a man who is haunted by the deaths of his wife and son, a man worried about his nation’s increasing disinterest in music, a man who loves nothing better than fishing in the morning and listening to the symphonic sounds of his village waking up.

Despite the heavy themes in this movie, there are plenty of awkward, Napoleon Dynamite-like moments that you can’t help but relate to as you laugh at their ridiculousness. My favorite scene was at the roller disco (yes, there is a scene at a roller disco) with "gloomy girl" and "scared-of-girls boy" as they awkwardly hook up. They provide a perfect illustration of the film’s recurring pent-up tension looking for release. The characters also lend a charm and a depth to the movie as we witness their painfully candid moments and uncomfortable encounters with each other. Not everyone speaks well, not everyone is sure of themselves, and not everyone is comfortable in social situations. They seem to be real people that Kolirin just happened to film. It is the believability and simplicity of the film that make it a superb production.

It may be a bit difficult to find this movie in the United States, so be sure to catch it at the Edina Cinema, where it opens on February 29th. It will be well worth your while.