The Band's Visit
Mar. 29th, 2008 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreI continued my recent movie binge by seeing The Band's Visit on Friday afternoon. This was the Israeli movie that was disqualified for the Oscar for best foreign film because it had too much English in it. The story involves an Egyptian police orchestra who mistakenly take a bus to the wrong town in Israel. They're stranded in Beit HaTkivah, with no bus until the next day, and get taken in by a local cafe owner who distributes the band members among households for the night.
There's a lot of awkwardness, with eventual realization of the shared humanity.
It's clear why the critics loved this movie. And there are some very good bits in it. When the cafe owner asks the band leader, "What do the police need with Um Kulthum?" he replies that you might as well ask why a man needs a soul. (Um Kulthum was a very famous Egyptian singer and her songs are the sort of thing the band plays.) There's also a very funny scene in which the youngest band member tutors a shy Israeli man on how to comfort a crying woman.
But there wasn't really enough quirkiness to make this work as a great slice of life for me. Only two of the band members are at all developed as characters, with a third providing a few glimpses. The only conflict involves a deteriorating marriage - hardly the stuff of grand comedy or drama. And there was some annoying cinematography, with some characters deliberately out of focus for way too long.
So, overall, it was a good movie, but didn't live up to the expectations I had from the glowing reviews.
There's a lot of awkwardness, with eventual realization of the shared humanity.
It's clear why the critics loved this movie. And there are some very good bits in it. When the cafe owner asks the band leader, "What do the police need with Um Kulthum?" he replies that you might as well ask why a man needs a soul. (Um Kulthum was a very famous Egyptian singer and her songs are the sort of thing the band plays.) There's also a very funny scene in which the youngest band member tutors a shy Israeli man on how to comfort a crying woman.
But there wasn't really enough quirkiness to make this work as a great slice of life for me. Only two of the band members are at all developed as characters, with a third providing a few glimpses. The only conflict involves a deteriorating marriage - hardly the stuff of grand comedy or drama. And there was some annoying cinematography, with some characters deliberately out of focus for way too long.
So, overall, it was a good movie, but didn't live up to the expectations I had from the glowing reviews.
