The Band's Visit
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.31 You Save: $25.68 (83%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.15 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Band's Visit
Movie Review: Perhaps Not Realistic, but a Film So Charming that We Want It To Be.
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Band's Visit" is an unexpected comedy about the meeting of Arab and Jewish cultures in Israel -unexpected because the cultures don't clash in any obvious way, and there is no hostility between the characters. Instead, a few bored working class Jews living in a dull desert town welcome the change of pace occasioned by a band of stranded Egyptians. The eight-man Alexandria Ceremonial Orchestra has traveled from Egypt to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center in Petah Tikva. But through an error of pronunciation, they take the bus to Bet Hatikva instead, a fictional drab desert town dominated by ugly mid-rise apartment buildings. A free-spirited, lonely restaurateur named Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) volunteers herself and two friends to put the band up for the night.
Writer and director Eran Kolirin has made a sweet, low-key dramedy in which everything is played straight, not for laughs. Indeed, Dina's loneliness and band leader Tewfiq Zakaria's (Sasson Gabai) embarrassment are palpable. That's not funny, but the characters seem genuine, and their situation is awkwardly amusing. Ronit Elkabetz deserves a lot of credit for making frank, bored Dina into a real charmer who steals every scene. Saleh Bakri is also a lot of fun to watch as handsome Haled, the band's youngest and most insolent member whose primary pursuit is flirting. Though "The Band's Visit" is obviously contrived to make a socio-political statement as well as to entertain, it is successful because these are characters that the audience would want to spend time with. In English, Hebrew, and Arabic with subtitles.
The DVD (Sony 2008): Bonus features are a theatrical trailer (2 min), a Photo Gallery of 29 stills, and a featurette called "The Band's Visit: Making the Fairy Tale" (14 min). It interviews writer/director Eran Kolirin about the project, composer Habib Shadah about the score, and actors Sasson Gabai, Ronit Elkabetz, and Saleh Bakri about their characters and working with Kolirin. Subtitles for the film are available in English. More than half of the film's dialogue is in English, as it is the language that the Israeli and Egyptian characters have in common. But due to their strong accents, the English dialogue is also subtitled.
Movie Review: Egyptian Police Band Gets Lost in Israel: Charming Little Film with Excellent Performances
Summary: 4 Stars
The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra gets lost in Israel. After taking a wrong bus from the airport, this small police band from Egypt is stranded at a small, sleepy town in Israel. Tired and hungry, eight members of the band all clad in light-blue uniform decide to stay overnight at the place. Using this simple story, Israeli-born director Eran Kolirin (his feature film debut) has made a very amusing and charming film.
Israel-France-US film "The Band's Visit" relates a set of episodes about the band's members and the local residents. Nothing big happens here, just small things that happen between Israeli hosts and Egyptian guests, but all these small things matter in "The Bands Visit," a bitter-sweet tale that will make you smile in a traditional way, without being too political.
The most impressive part for me is about the band's rigid and stoic conductor Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai) and the restaurant owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), who is also an attractive woman (in red dress). Difficulties of communication still lie between them when he reluctantly accepts her invitation to dinner, but they slowly begin to reveal what is hidden deep in their heart to one another (and us) - after all Tawfiq may not be the only one who has been left stranded at this quiet town. The excellent performances from Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz are really fantastic.
Another memorable episode is an equally charming and almost silent one. It happens at the roller disco scene where one of the band's younger members teaches a timid local boy how to seduce a girl. It is a little gem and you have to see it for yourself to understand that sometimes silence is the best way to tell a good story.
The theme of the film may not be particularly new, and it must be said that this quiet film may require patience for some viewers. Still with the great performances from the cast "The Band's Visit" is a lovely little film with genuinely magical moments.
Movie Review: A very nice "small story" (some spoilers inside)
Summary: 4 Stars
This is one of those small, understated, quaint, slow, nice but not earth-shattering movies that are the antithesis of Hollywood and are instead relatively common in Europe and Asia. If you are into movies with a "plot", you will most likely hate this movie, which is all about inter-personal relationships and where much of what is going on is left implicit.
I also suspect that this is a movie that requires at least a mild understanding of the state of the Arab-Israeli relationship to be really appreciated. But overall "The band's visit" really succeeds in many ways. It's *very* well acted (Ronit Elkabetz is outstanding as Dina). It feels real, even if some of the characters appears to have jumped out of a comic movie (e.g. the Isreali guy who never went with a woman). It includes both hilarious and very sad moments. It deals with a fairly un-original framework (how casual encounters may change our lives forever) in a very orginal way, and without actually describing a clear resolution. We do not know for sure what will happen to the main characters, but we are given hints. Probably the deputy-conductor will finish that concerto after all. Probably the conductor will forgive the young violinist's mistake, so perhaps atoning for his inability to forgive his son years before. Perhaps the conductor will even open up himself to life and love in the future, after having glimpsed possibilities with Dina.
Where I do not agree with other reviewers' point of view is in seeing this movie as successful at showing us how deep cultural and historical divisions can be easily bridged once people start talking to each other. This is, unfortunately, quite naive. Even so, this remains an excellent bitter-sweet movie about human relationships, and even though its "political" content may be weak, I would still recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of understated story-telling.
Movie Review: Quiet character study, very human and humane
Summary: 4 Stars
An Egyptian police band arrives in Israel to play at the opening of an Arab cultural center. Due to a mix-up they are not met at the airport and take the bus to the wrong destination - Beit Hatikva instead of Petah Tikva. It turns out to be an almost deserted, run-down hole in the ground somewhere in the desert where, as one character says, there is no Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all.
The movie traces the interaction of the band members with some of the locals who offer them hospitality. Little by little, we learn about these characters -- their frustrated hopes and hidden sorrows. Divided by language and culture, they manage to find common ground in some of the small details of daily life.
This is a quiet, restrained movie which makes its points subtly, without blaring them. It is also a movie, made through cooperation of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian actors, from which politics is entirely absent. These people don't have the time or energy to fight out the Middle East peace process -- they are too busy trying to get through their tough and unsatisfying lives with some dignity intact.
Visually this movie was a delight. The weird sky blue of the band's uniform is posed against the drab desert background of the town.
This movie is not flawless. I found it difficult to believe that the feisty lead female character would allow herself to be stuck in a place like Beit Hatikva. Some of the plot developments are a little predictable. But all in all, this quiet movie containts some lovely performances and a message we can all relate to.
Movie Review: Lost and Found
Summary: 4 Stars
Like the utterly different Paradise Now, The Band's Visit finds the complex humans behind the popular dichotomies of the Middle East. A budget-pressed Egyptian police band, still resplendent in their (as one character says) "Michael Jackson" uniforms arrives in Israel, is not met by their sponsors, takes travel matters into their own hands, and winds up lost and nearly without money in the most dreary desert town this side of Wristcutters: A Love Story. The band is hungry; its straitlaced director approaches the restaurant owner, Dina, and asks for food and the chance to pay with Egyptian money. She prepares a meal and, after telling them there is no hotel in town, invites them to stay in her home and that of her unemployed friend with marriage problems and a wife's birthday.
And so the bare desert stage is set for a singular night. Among the many quiet, amusing and lonely vignettes: the band director, Tewfiq, reveals his personal sadness to Dina in a concrete plaza as they listen to an imaginary sea; a band member unconsciously wipes out a glass as if in a dubious restaurant, except he's sitting at table with his Israeli hosts; and -- best of all -- the band's ladies man gives dating help in a roller rink to a painfully shy Israeli.
Day comes, the band moves on to its correct destination, and plays. Life returns to normal, but normal for the dozen characters in The Band's Visit has been forever, if only slightly, altered.