In a strange contrast to current events in Israel in Gaza, I ended up watching the 2007 movie “The Band’s Visit” last night. It’s about a police orchestra from Alexandria, Egypt (represent?) who is invited to play at the Arab cultural center in an Israeli city. Things get lost in translation, and they end up taking a bus to a Podunk town in the middle of nowhere, with “no culture,” let alone an Arab cultural center, as they are told by the sass-prone Israeli restaurant owner who allows them to stay the night before they catch the next bus to the correct city for their performance the next day.
Almost all of the movie takes place in between when the band arrives and when they leave the next day. All the characters are almost poignant in their awkwardness, and there are some really beautiful and hilarious moments. At times, it reminds me a bit of Napoleon Dynamite… if Napoleon Dynamite had been set in the Middle East, and hadn’t been so shamelessly striving to be a new cult classic.
Mostly, it’s nice to see a movie that is technically about Israeli-Arab relations insist that it is more importantly about basic human relations of the most ordinary quality. Plenty of tension, but no mention of suicide bombers, rockets, or walls. Which is not the same as pretending they are not there, but they don’t always need to play the leading roles.
Anyway, below is one of my favorite scenes, in which Khalid (the young Don Juan of the Alexandrian orchestra), help Papi (a horribly awkward Israeli man) comfort his equally awkward blind date. It starts out a little slow, but trust me, it’s worth sticking around for the end.
