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The Band's Visit
By Josh
Kirschenbaum
The Band Visit is an
enjoyable and satisfying foreign comedy
The members of Alexandria
Ceremonial Police Orchestra are a mostly lifeless bunch. Led by Tewfiq,
the authoritative, emotionally distant conductor, they stand in a line
by the side of the road. Hired to play at the opening of an Arab
Cultural Center in Israel, they find themselves in a small,
middle-of-nowhere town. As there are no more buses for the day, they are
forced to spend the night in this broken down Israeli village.
The set-up of The Band’s Visit is gimmicky (Egyptians in Israel,
hilarity ensues) but its execution is reserved, elevating the film from
a formulaic fish-out-of-water comedy to a touching study of cultural
relativity. The Band’s Visit gets much of its humor from dry, awkward
moments reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite. The Band’s Visit is the
antithesis of that film, however, as its characters never become broad
cartoons. It attempts to balance heartfelt realism with comic antics,
but goes too far in its flirtation with despair, and ultimately come off
as more depressing than intended.
The band members part ways for the night, finding themselves in various
degrees of discomfort. One waits by a pay phone for a call from the
Egyptian embassy, accompanied by a villager who waits by the phone every
night, expecting a call from his girlfriend. Others find themselves in a
household with a crumbling marriage. Tewfiq keeps a watchful eye over
the womanizing, Chet Baker singing Khaled, whose mistake landed them in
their current predicament; they are taken in by the flirtatious Dina,
who takes Tewfiq out for a night on the town. Khaled tails along with
Papi, a gauche, shrimpy man who has difficulty talking to women.
The Band’s Visit was disqualified from the best foreign language film
category at the Oscars for having too much English. In fact, almost the
entirety of the film is in English, as it is the common language between
the Hebrew-speaking Israelis and the Arabic-speaking Egyptians. There is
something very sad about the way they talk, trying to convey complex
feeling with a language they barely know.
The Band’s Visit is enjoyable from beginning to end, but it leaves a bad
aftertaste. Looking back on the film, you may find yourself forgetting
what made it so fun to watch. The film tries to contrast the
freewheeling Khaled with the quiet Tewfiq, but Tewfiq is the one we care
about, depressing though he is, because while Khaled’s antics are
appealing, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Tewfiq’s scenes are
rarely funny, but they come across as honest. He is a proud man;; he
wears glasses, but only puts them on when he absolutely must, as if they
would display some sort of weakness on his part. Tewfiq’s sadness
overpowers the lighter aspects of the film. But I can’t really complain,
he is such an interesting character that I was upset let him go as the
credits rolled. I wish there was some payoff for Tewfiq, some great
revelation to bring him out of his shell. But alas, he remains cold and
distant.
The film closes on a bittersweet moment. The band, having arrived at
their intended destination, plays beautifully. Tewfiq is a marvelous
conductor, and Khaled certainly knows his way around a trumpet. The
moment rings false, however, in the context of the rest of the film.
Sure, some people get a happy ending. But a telephone call or a kiss
offers little solace when weighed against the implosion of a marriage or
the death of a family. Both the villagers and the band members suffer
through life’s tribulations with equal consequence.
The point the film
is trying to make, that the cultural divide isn’t so important, that
Arabs and Israelis aren’t so different after all, comes through loud and
clear, though maybe not in the lighthearted way the filmmakers intended.
***/****
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