Sunday, December 21, 2008

Review: The Band's Visit

I'm a firm believer in one of the entries in Roger Ebert's Little Movie Glossary, which (in paraphrase) states that if a critic ever uses the word "ennui" (meaning boredom) in the review of a film, particularly a foreign film, it's going to be pretentious and boring as hell. I think that with "The Band's Visit," I've found an exception, because although it is an exercise in the ennui of being trapped in a small town with little hope of true escape, the film is anything but boring. In its own extremely subtle way, it's one of the year's funniest films.

The film opens with a fairy tale statement of sorts: "Once, not long ago, a small Egyptian police band arrived in Israel. Not many people remember this, it wasn't that important." And really, it isn't. The band arrives in Israel to perform at a new Arab cultural center, only to find that the van scheduled to pick them up has failed to appear. They send the group's lothario, Haled (Saleh Bakri) to ask for the first available bus, but due to a combination of nomenclature issues and Haled's flirtations with the customer service girl, they end up in Bet Hatikva, a tiny, dreary town where the only sign of life is the local cafe owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), who kindly informs the band's conductor Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai) that not only is there not an Arab cultural center, but "No Israeli culture, no Arab culture, no culture at all." A regular at the cafe helpfully adds "Bloody nothing."

Eventually, Tewfiq and Dina strike a deal, and she convinces a couple of the regulars to entertain the band for the evening and give them a place to sleep. From here, the film does not really progress a plot, nor does it have a real point. But then, a film doesn't have to all the time. This often leads to meandering art pieces, but here it works, for it follows the rhythm of real small-town life, where the most profound moments can be found in the tiniest silences and quirks, and something can be touching without being grandiose.

Over the course of the night, three of the band reside in the house of a man whose dreams of musical grandeur are briefly revitalized by the presence of a band, even a tiny police band. Haled goes with a young man to the local roller disco and attempts to help him flirt with and seduce a woman. The real crux of the film, however, is the tentative semi-courtship between Dina and Tewfiq. I say semi because neither of them is really chasing the other, or anything for that matter. For different reasons, neither wants to be involved with a lover again, but what they find in one another is arguably more important.

The film goes in unexpected directions, but it does not shy away from the inevitable. It's not really a spoiler to say that in the morning, the band goes on their merry way, and the small town continues to be unimpressive. We don't spend enough time with these people to know whether the events of that fateful night changed them, but we can surmise that it has at least touched them, and that might be all that we can ask.

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