Film: The Band's Visit

I went to see The Band's Visit with interest but also some apprehension. The film, directed by Eran Kolirin, has won all kinds of special jury and audience prizes at a great number of festivals, which in my experience often equates with over-sentimental, well-directed, but also rather mainstream films.

In this case, however, I was pleasantly surprised.



While the story has a sentimental and feel-good factor to it, it is also beautifully sad and wonderfully directed by Kolirin, who makes airports and desert roads and abandoned city wasteland look as gorgeous as Renaissance paintings.

It's film about loss, the loss of love and personal opportunities, but also the loss of a greater, historical opportunity within Israel, that of the encounter with the Arabic culture (the conflict is not even mentioned, but its background presence as heavy and oppressive as in any war movie).

The story describes an Egyptian band getting lost in a desert settlement in Israel on their way to an Arab Culture Centre. They need to spend the night in this settlement, while waiting for the bus that will take them to what might be their last concert: formed by members of the Alexandria Police, the band has become obsolete and there are rumours that it might be axed on their return home.

Over the night they and their improvised Israeli hosts get to know each other, bond a little, share the same longing for youth and a better time.

In the morning they go their separate ways.

Not much happens, but the film is at the same funny (at times hilarious) and excruciatingly painful. Nostalgic to the core for something that perhaps never existed.

My favourite scene is when the Israeli protagonist, a beautiful woman with a complex past life we only get glimpses of through her smirk and the look of eyes that have experienced a lot, tells the band director how, as a child, she used to watch Arabic films on TV every Friday night; how she learnt to fall in love from Omar Sharif and love stories that would glue the entire country glued to their TV screens.

Earlier on she had asked him: why does the Alexandria Police need a traditional Arabic music band, anyway? His reply: "This is like asking why a man needs a soul."

And when the band finally gets to play, the soul is laid bare.