'Band's Visit' plays new, unique tune

Thinking in terms of the most basic impressions of Middle Eastern politics, one would assume a film about an Egyptian police band’s unusual visit to Israel would address national enmities that already get more than their fair share of attention.

And it’s precisely for this reason that “The Band’s Visit” surprises with its sophisticated treatment of cultural encounters. It unexpectedly comments on Israeli society’s regression towards cultural isolation in the Middle East.

When an Egyptian band, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, arrives at an Israeli airport, the band members — dressed in their signature blue uniforms — are met only by a man who wants to take their picture.

Their feelings of being out of place and lost come across powerfully as they can’t even seem to reach those they need to by phone. One band member calls, speaks his name into the phone, tries at least two languages, hears music coming through the earpiece, and then the other side hangs up. A second attempt doesn’t bring a different result.

The band members, who have arrived at a desert Israeli town, are looking for the cultural center where they are supposed to perform. Discovering they’re in the wrong town and the right bus won’t be back until the next day, they eventually end up spending the night as the guests of a few Israelis they run into — some who open up their homes to them more willingly than others.

And so this becomes a story about strangers — Egyptian and Israeli ones — who meet and help put each other’s lives back on the right track. Except this time, the strangers carry passports that presumably make them enemy nationalities — regular people torn by regional politics. And while this storyline applies to “The Band’s Visit,” the film’s plot is much deeper than that.

Every character we meet struggles with loneliness. There’s the couple that needs to be reconciled, a young man who stands next to the pay phone every night waiting for his girlfriend to call, and a restaurant owner who looks for a one-night stand among the Egyptian band members.

And when the songs too speak of loneliness, one gets to thinking that this theme is central to the film’s plot. True, in that the movie speaks to Israel’s movement towards cultural loneliness in the Middle East, mourning that contemporary Israeli society no longer grows up watching Egyptian movies on Friday afternoons and that the culture has replaced the celebration of classic Arabic songs with short, catchy pop tunes. For some of the film’s characters, not appreciating Egyptian film and classic Arabic music is a retreat into a stale and bland culture where depth is often difficult to find.

Being a story also about communication hurdles, the film shows how the Egyptians and Israelis struggle to translate their ideas into the commonly understood English and to have themselves accepted by the other. They’re often left with no option but to interpret each other’s body language or to act certain ideas out — such as standing before an audience to conduct an orchestra. And their theatrical miming in these cases seems to give such simple ideas a refreshingly new and beautiful depth.

And then music can come in and reconcile persons who didn’t really trust each other. In one scene, four Israelis and three Egyptians sit rather awkwardly at the dinner table until one of them asks if they recognize a song that he begins to hum. They all join in the singing, thus breaking the ice.

Yet the film avoids the simple idealism of “Oh, this can be a perfectly peaceful world.”

There’s still that initial mockery of the other at their first encounter and there are those who don’t get over their dislike. There’s the awkwardness that remains a part of their acquaintances. In some ways, the Israeli and the Egyptian characters aren’t reconciled during the course of the movie. And yet the film makes a statement on the possibilities for cultural exchange and the ways in which cultural diplomacy works a type of unexplainable magic.

Starring some of Israel’s leading actors and some rising Palestinian ones, the film casts non-Egyptian actors as the band members. Although those actors have not yet mastered Egyptian speech, they are pretty close to doing so. Their talk comes across initially as a bit exaggerated, but viewers quickly grow accustomed to their speech patterns and so there’s not much loss in authenticity.

And it’s the acting that shines in this movie. Working with the three languages — English, Arabic and Hebrew — that mingle in “The Band’s Visit,” every performance reaches out and expresses itself effectively and with a subtlety that makes every character seem just as ordinary as the fellow who lives next door or the woman who owns the restaurant across the street. It’s the performances — handled with such delicacy and sincerity —that make the film’s slow-paced plot and the concerns of its characters even the slightest bit interesting to those watching.

Perhaps what is least impressive about “The Band’s Visit” is the work of its cinematographer Shai Goldman, who doesn’t try to do anything too fancy. Shots lasted as long as a minute in some cases. Most shots were straight-on.

And though the straightforward cinematography may be a plus in that it doesn’t shift attention away from the actors, their conversations and interactions, for a slow-moving plot where there isn’t much action, more elaborate camera work wouldn’t have hurt.

The film didn’t particularly convey what Arabs may like about Israeli culture. But it does convincingly illustrate how many Israelis have not only familiarized themselves with Arab culture but also exhibit a fondness for it. And at this point in history, that’s a very pertinent and unique message to share.

Rating: Three out of five stars.