'The Band's Visit': A Fine and Mellow Riff

A mini-scandal erupted earlier this year when Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin's sublime and bittersweet comedy "The Band's Visit" was disqualified as a nominee for Best Foreign Language Film on the grounds that it contained too much English.

Now, audiences have a chance to see for themselves what that particular hubbub was all about, and they will no doubt agree that this smart, subtle, deceptively simple little film was robbed. The story of an Egyptian police band that becomes stranded in a small Israeli town, "The Band's Visit" is precisely the sort of modest, no-bells, no-whistles movie that benefits incalculably from winning or even just being nominated for an Oscar. With luck, filmgoers who discover this gem will quickly tell their friends and help make it the must-see movie of the season.

"The Band's Visit" begins just as eight men who make up the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrive at an unnamed Israeli airport. They're on their way to perform at an Arab culture center, but between their Arabic, broken English and nonexistent Hebrew, they wind up in a dusty desert backwater, befuddled but still impeccably turned out in their handsome light blue uniforms.

Stuck for the night, until the next bus comes, the musicians warily navigate what passes for life in the moribund town, with the group's proper, diffident conductor Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai) striking up a friendship with an earthy, direct cafe owner named Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), a handsome young violinist named Haled (Saleh Bakri) embarking on an improbably eventful night on the town, and a clarinetist named Simon (Khalifa Natour) finding himself at an awkward dinner with two alternately mistrustful and expansive Jewish couples.

Audiences expecting a polemic on Arab-Israeli relations in "The Band's Visit" will be delightfully surprised by Kolirin's light, assured touch. Although a political subtext informs the entire encounter between the band and their hosts, it remains bubbling beneath the surface (the most explicit political "statement" in the film is when a band member quietly hangs his hat over a celebratory photograph of the Six-Day War).

Instead, Kolirin focuses on the ballet of human interaction, letting scenes unfold with few words and a multitude of physical gestures and meanings, resulting in a small masterpiece of quiet, expressive physical comedy reminiscent of the French master of the form, Jacques Tati. As he follows his characters through the trials of a summer night-- each of them flawlessly limned by an ensemble of fantastic Israeli actors -- Kolirin composes, brush stroke by gentle brush stroke, an indelible portrait of a lonely planet where peace is simply the accumulation of vagrant, fragile moments of connection.

Written with warmth and observant humor, acted with unerring judiciousness (especially by the sensational Elkabetz and the mournful-faced Gabai), "The Band's Visit" is also a brilliant study of form and space, as Kolirin regularly pulls his camera back to reveal his characters against the desolate backdrop of Israel's sere countryside and boxlike, low-modernist architecture.

What ultimately makes "The Band's Visit" such an unmitigated pleasure to watch is the unforced way Kolirin brings the chapter of the title characters' journey to its natural but still deeply affecting end. "The Band's Visit" is much like the ending of the concerto Simon incessantly tries to finish throughout the film -- not happy, not sad, just sweet and sound of heart.

The Band's Visit (89 minutes, in English, Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for brief strong profanity.