La visite de la fanfare

Eran Kolirin is a name to watch out for. This film maker is simply brilliant. In the band's visit he tells a quite simple story, but not without pulling a trick here and there and believe me, he's not a one trick pony. Actor performances are subdued and very truthful making the movie a story of unpersued dreams that goes straight to the heart. It's warm melancholy mood never gets heavy or painful cause it's countered so wittily with scenes that make you smile from ear to ear. To top it all off there's well chosen music, honest photography and clever camera direction. The Band's visit tells of a classic mix-up, but without ever being cheap.

Greetings again from the darkness. Stellar film from rising star, Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin. This film offers the beautifully delivered message that regardless of our culture, we all want to be connected to another person. Other than the language we speak, we really aren't so dissimilar.

The Egyptian Police Orchestra is stranded on their way to play at the opening of an Arab Culture Center. The language barrier causes them to be stuck in a one-horse town with a similar type name. What follows is a touching story and terrific film-making. So much is communicated with so few words.

There are three of four amazing scenes. My favorite is probably the funniest in the film. At the roller rink, one of the band members assists an awkward local with the proper technique in consoling a girl whose feelings he has hurt. It is funny and touching and moving and insightful all at once. The band leader's scenes with Dena, the beautiful and lonely restaurateur who takes the band in for the evening, are so emotional and sincere that I kept wanting to scream at them both! Just great stuff.

I look forward to more from Eran Kolirin and it is very sad that this film was disqualified in the Foreign Language category due to the determination that too much English was used. Still, it doesn't change the fact that this is a terrific movie and story.

As a dedicated husband of a BAFTA voting member, we trawl through 100+ DVD's at this time of year. The Hollywood movies all blur into muchness, but then this film comes along without any fancy marketing blurb, no fancy box, just a DVD in a plastic sleeve. We put it in and said we would give it 10 minutes, and spent the next 100 minutes or so spellbound and laughing our socks off! The acting was simply wonderful, the comic situations and timing were redolent of "The Office", and the political analogies were intriguing, The soundtrack was the best of any 2007 movie imho. It gets our nomination for Best Film, Best Direction, Best Editing, Best Soundtrack, with further nominations for the "Dina" and "Tewfiq" actors plus a vote for others in the band in the supporting actor category.

Try to see it if you can!

A fully uniformed Egyptian police band arrives in Israel to perform at the opening ceremony of a new Arab Cultural Center but no one shows up to meet them at the airport. Lonely and tired, they end up taking the wrong bus, ending up in Bet Hatikvah, a lonely outpost in the Negev that, according to one of its residents, not only doesn't have a cultural center but has no culture. Unable to get transportation until the next morning, the band agrees to stay overnight at a local restaurant run by Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), a free-spirited but lonely Israeli restaurateur who longs for companionship.

Eran Kolirin's A Band's Visit is the story of the small connections that bring people together. Israeli's submission as Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (rejected because much of its dialog is in English), it is about what some of us have lost in modern society – the ability to reach across cultural, political, and language barriers to connect with fellow human beings. Over the course of the evening, the Israelis and the Egyptians approach each other tentatively and little by little, the staid Egyptians open up to their Israeli hosts, finding some common ground exemplified in a spontaneous dinner table rendition of George Gershwin's "Summertime".

When the two groups begin to get to know each other, they find that beneath the language and cultural differences, they are simply people - full of joy and sadness, friendship and loneliness, connection and loss. Tewfiq (Sasson Gabal), the conductor of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, is formal and rigid in his demeanor but is able to strike up a friendship with Dina (Ronit Elkabetz). After some awkward silences, the melancholy conductor reveals details of tragic losses in his family and how he feels that he is to blame. Another band member, Khaled (Saleh Bakri) decides to accompany local Papi (Shlomi Avraham) and his date to a roller skating rink. In a memorable scene, Khaled offers the socially backward Papi some instructions on courting his shy girl friend.

In another moving sequence, band member Simon (Kalifa Natour) plays a lovely but unfinished composition for the clarinet for Itzik (Rubi Moscovich) who tells him that he should end the piece, not with a traditional showy display but with what is there for him at the moment, "not sad, not happy, a small room, a lamp, a bed, a child sleeping, and tons of loneliness." A Band's Visit is a film about Israeli's and Arabs but without the usual backdrop of boundary disputes, the peace process, or the religious divide, even avoiding the clichés about how music is a universal language. It is a small film but wise in its understated depiction of humanity's common bonds, slow-paced but held together with a sensitive charm.

A movie that should be getting lot more press.

Enjoyable and bit quirky to see the kinds of situations people get into, that are much like we may experience anywhere else in the world.

Others have laid out the plot well and nothing more needs to be said about how the story develops.

I found two scene in this movie the kind that one must remember, rather like the many one may recall from Bogart in Casablanca.

The exchange at the phone and the scenes at the skating rink are precious and very well acted.

This is a movie I recommend seeing and then putting into memory to come back and see again and again just for the pure pleasure of a well developed comedy.