The universal language, it seems, is not music.
“The Band’s
Visit” arrives in America wrapped in European recognition. What to expect?
Knowing the Egyptian band becomes stranded in Israel, perhaps a riff on cross
cultural difficulties with eventual triumph for the universal language of music?
How typical of an American movie reviewer to expect that, and how wrong.
First, the
visual. The Alexandria Police Ceremonial Orchestra lands in Israel. Eight men in
sky blue police uniforms stand on the white concrete just this side of the
endless white desert. Director Eran Kolirin has even left people out of this
sight, all the better to tell us that his movie will be spare and stark. Knowing
he must do something, anything, their leader, Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai), starts
toward the terminal. The eight musicians follow in single file, each towing a
black wheeled suitcase, some pulling their instruments, also wheeled. How lucky
the ones who play a flute instead of a bass fiddle. Eight bright blue figures
against white concrete and white sand in a nearly empty world – that’s not just
the landscape; it’s the sustaining premise of the whole film.
Tewfiq sends
his newest recruit, tall and skinny Khaled (Saleh Bakri) to inquire about the
next bus to their destination. Somewhere in this tri-lingual transaction,
something is mispronounced so that the band ends up stranded again in a bleak
desert town. But they catch a big piece of luck this time in the form of Dina (Ronit
Elkabetz, in a beautiful performance of both vitality and resignation),
proprietor of a café as empty and bleak as their surroundings. Dina arranges
their overnight accommodations – in the café and with a friend after reminding
them, “no more bus, no hotel, no Israeli culture, no Egyptian culture, no
culture at all.” In awkward expressions in the several languages, the three make
their way across emotional borders to touching moments of understanding. Wary of
offending the others, each reaches out in gentle formality. But the connections
are never verbalized; they are sometimes understood, sometimes missed.
Watch for a
scene of the wonderful Khaled tutoring a young man in the ways of understanding
the needs of his girlfriend, and again for a beautiful scene of a band member
reliving his own sadness as he studies a baby in a crib. Director Kolirin is so
frugal with words and gestures that we stare intensely at these characters to
find the meaning of the movie, and finally we do. The universal language, it
seems, is not music (there is very little of it here), but loneliness. Director
Kolirin takes his broom and sweeps aside all the debris of daily life along with
the subtleties of language and culture that might distract us from his central
premise: everyone is alone. What remains on his stark canvas are human beings
and their controlled emotions struggling to connect in some way with each other,
to step into another’s aloneness or to bring someone into their own.
Copyright (c) Illusion