THE BAND'S VISIT (2007) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Eran Kolirin
Sasson Gabai, Ronit Elkabetz, Saleh Bakri,
Khalifa Natour, Imad Jabarin, Tarak Kopty
An Egyptian concert band, in Israel to perform at the opening of an Arab cultural center, catches the wrong bus and ends up in the middle of nowhere, in a place that has "no Arab cultural center, no Israeli cultural center, no culture." A deliberately paced, low-key comedy that gets the little human details just right, while mostly sidestepping regional politics. The only overt concession to the issue that underlies everything in the Middle East occurs when one of the musicians, sitting at a table in a roadside cafe, uses his uniform cap to cover a framed photograph of a (presumably Israeli) tank. The movie begins with a title announcing that the events it portrays are unimportant, and maybe that's the case. Or maybe in this part of the world, the simple notion of people sharing a quiet conversation or a piece of music, instead of bulldozing houses and blowing each other to bits, isn't so unimportant, after all.
