An Egyptian band touring Israel gets lost in a remote desert town, with no help coming and no idea where to go. Does this sound like a comedy? The Band’s Visit is wholly atypical, yet it is a comedy—delightful and unassuming with no political agenda. It uses comedy to observe the differences between two cultures. Think Napoleon Dynamite’s stale, dry humor but in the Middle East (and without any of the stupid catchphrases).
We begin with the band: eight middle-aged men with hardened faces and baby-blue uniforms—a simple, strange, and very crude opposition. The leader Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai) has brought the group to Israel in order to play at the opening of a new Arab cultural center in a small town. Unfortunately, they take the wrong bus and end up in a ghost town. Confused, a local woman explains that the town has “no Arab culture, no Israeli culture, no culture at all.” Feeling sympathetic to their awkward position, the woman, named Dina (Ronit Elkabitz), decides to put them up for the night. They can’t speak each other’s languages, yet both sides know some crude English and use that in an attempt to communicate. Let the mayhem begin.
The comedy in The Band’s Visit is hilarious, playing up the awkwardness between these two cultures that have been at war for 30 years. It’s all very deadpan, which can sometimes be painful. Director Eran Korilin has a knack for shot choice, though, and always chooses the best cuts and shots that make the film much funnier than the premise makes it out to be. The laughing audience fills up the awkward moments and stale silences. There are a couple of very silly subplots that don’t add much to the overall themes, yet The Band’s Visit never fails to amuse.
By the end of the film, characters do open up and some “coming together” experiences occur. But the script is never forced, unpretentiously showing how much closer these people are than they may imagine. Dina tells Tawfiq that when she was a little girl, her city’s streets would be empty on Sunday nights, as the entire city crammed in rooms to watch Egyptian movies. It’s a very honest moment, in a film that never tries to become anything more than it is.
Israel submitted the film earlier this year as its choice for the foreign-language Oscar, but it was disqualified for the large amount of English used in the film. It’s too bad the Academy didn’t understand that this film is all about language and the borders in between. Everything in The Band’s Visit is simple and amusing, yet it is much more honest about cultural relations than many other straight political flicks out there.