The Band's Visit has to be one of the most awesome movies I've seen this year. We start with the Alexandria Ceremonial Orchestra, which is pretty much a police orchestra. The Egyptian band is traveling to a town in Israel to celebrate the opening of an Arabic cultural center. Instead, however, they end up in the wrong town and there is no bus out of this desolate, culture-dead ghost town until the next day. So we follow the band for the day and see who they really are. There is the serious loner of a director, his number one follower who would like to conduct but is never allowed to and who wanted to write a concerto on his clarinet but never finished, and the playboy who is always hitting on the girls. And yet, they all have more to them and this is the interesting journey of discovery on which we are set.
This film is beautiful and absolutely astoundingly perfect in so many ways. Most obvious is the play on the play on language. Most of the Egyptian band members speak in Arabic, though some speak in broken or highly accented English, which becomes the only way of communicating with the Israelis. A restaurant owner in the forlorn Israeli town offers the band members lodging and convinces her regulars to offer them lodging as well. So the band gets split up, and from there we learn more about each person as well as the people who they are staying with, and their lives. There are awkward scenes and it seems there is not too much to say at times. But the dialogue is so perfect, maybe because everyone must carefully choose their words in order to communicate in the common English language. At the same time, there is the idea of listening to a foreign language and hearing music and understanding the meaning by sound, by a different kind of knowledge than fluency.
One of the more poignant parts of the film is when one of the Israeli restaurant regulars talks to the follower Egyptian orchestra guy who never finished his clarinet concerto. We stare at the happy wedding picture of the regular guy with his wife after a dinner that showed that their marriage is not a happy one. Additionally, it's the baby's room, and the baby is in front of the two men and there are toys everywhere. The two men awkwardly sit together in front of the crib, and then the Israeli guy tells the Egyptian clarinet player, "You know, maybe this I how your concerto ends. I mean not a big end with trumpets and violins, maybe this is the finish. Just like that, suddenly. Not sad, not happy. Just, ah, a small room, a lamp, a bed, child sleeps, and (pauses, gestures with hands, laughs out of embarrassment for taking long to think of the words) tons of loneliness." Later, we are with the director and the playboy. The director had just had a rather distant one-on-one time with the restaurant owner lady, and now the three of them are back at her flat. The playboy takes out his instrument. A lone trumpet plays. The director and the lady stare off. There are so many picturesque, just gorgeous and lovely scenes in this film. It is filled with the sorrowful knowledge of how life is and what you know will come by experience.
Finally, after the awkwardness, the silence and heartbreak, we see what this group can do. I sank back into my seat, now intimately familiar with every member of the orchestra, and see them come together and revel in the beauty of classical Arabic orchestral music. This film is simply gorgeous and delicious to watch, see and here. It is a breath-taking experience that makes you think, and one I highly recommend.
This film is beautiful and absolutely astoundingly perfect in so many ways. Most obvious is the play on the play on language. Most of the Egyptian band members speak in Arabic, though some speak in broken or highly accented English, which becomes the only way of communicating with the Israelis. A restaurant owner in the forlorn Israeli town offers the band members lodging and convinces her regulars to offer them lodging as well. So the band gets split up, and from there we learn more about each person as well as the people who they are staying with, and their lives. There are awkward scenes and it seems there is not too much to say at times. But the dialogue is so perfect, maybe because everyone must carefully choose their words in order to communicate in the common English language. At the same time, there is the idea of listening to a foreign language and hearing music and understanding the meaning by sound, by a different kind of knowledge than fluency.
One of the more poignant parts of the film is when one of the Israeli restaurant regulars talks to the follower Egyptian orchestra guy who never finished his clarinet concerto. We stare at the happy wedding picture of the regular guy with his wife after a dinner that showed that their marriage is not a happy one. Additionally, it's the baby's room, and the baby is in front of the two men and there are toys everywhere. The two men awkwardly sit together in front of the crib, and then the Israeli guy tells the Egyptian clarinet player, "You know, maybe this I how your concerto ends. I mean not a big end with trumpets and violins, maybe this is the finish. Just like that, suddenly. Not sad, not happy. Just, ah, a small room, a lamp, a bed, child sleeps, and (pauses, gestures with hands, laughs out of embarrassment for taking long to think of the words) tons of loneliness." Later, we are with the director and the playboy. The director had just had a rather distant one-on-one time with the restaurant owner lady, and now the three of them are back at her flat. The playboy takes out his instrument. A lone trumpet plays. The director and the lady stare off. There are so many picturesque, just gorgeous and lovely scenes in this film. It is filled with the sorrowful knowledge of how life is and what you know will come by experience.
Finally, after the awkwardness, the silence and heartbreak, we see what this group can do. I sank back into my seat, now intimately familiar with every member of the orchestra, and see them come together and revel in the beauty of classical Arabic orchestral music. This film is simply gorgeous and delicious to watch, see and here. It is a breath-taking experience that makes you think, and one I highly recommend.