Band's Visit, The

80

Sony Pictures Classics (87 minutes)
and Eran Kolirin
Ronit Elkabetz , Sasson Gabai , Uri Gavriel , Imad Jabarin , Ahuva Keren , Rubi Moskovitz , Khalifa Natour , and Hilla Sarjon

Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language

Summary: The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrives in Israel to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center. Dressed in full regalia and observing all military police protocol, the members of the orchestra are at a pivotal time in their careers. It’s not just the political nature of an Arab military police band playing traditional Arab music in Israel that makes this event so important; budget cuts and many reorganizations have threatened the continued existence of the Orchestra. Faced with the heavy burden of this assignment, the stoic conductor Tewfiq is determined not to foul their excursion. Despite all Tewfiqs efforts, it’s not long before problems arise. The band arrives at the airport with no one there to greet them. Stranded and unable able to contact their Israeli hosts or the Egyptian consulate for help, Tewfiq decides that the Orchestra will persevere with its assignment and orders, and designates Khaled, a sauve young ladies man, to ask for directions. Khaled and the station agent struggle in English, Arabic and Hebrew to communicate, but despite their best efforts, the Orchestra is sent to the outskirts of a small forgotten Israeli town in the desert. (Sony Classics)

Will Lawrence
Empire:
(100) A heartfelt, wry and decidedly spry film.

David Wiegand
San Francisco Chronicle:
(100) A lovely, smart and beautifully understated film.

Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times:
(100) The Band’s Visit has not provided any of the narrative payoffs we might have expected, but has provided something more valuable: An interlude involving two “enemies,” Arabs and Israelis, that shows them both as only ordinary people with ordinary hopes, lives and disappointments. It has also shown us two souls with rare beauty.

Michael Sragow
Baltimore Sun:
(100) This movie has a tone, look and mood all its own - it's a joyously bittersweet piece of visual music about isolation, melancholy and everyone's yearning for transcendence, through love, art or both.

Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly:
(91) Something marvelous happens as the filmmaker, in his first feature, expertly metes out small scenes of communication between people taught, for generations, to be wary of one another: This Band swings with the rhythms of hope.

Carrie Rickey
Philadelphia Inquirer:
(88) First-time filmmaker Kolirin paces his can-we-all-just-get-along? parable as if it were a silent comedy, which for long stretches it is. This movie about musicians has no soundtrack. Its musical moments are few, but potent.

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