Friday, June 20, 2008
A day and a night on tour with the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra
I became aware and a part of this phenomena when I went to see King of Hearts with Alan Bates sometime in 1972 (probably.) King of Hearts was still the current cult of the quirky movie from another country. This cult had celebrated films with Alec Guinness and Jacques Tati before I got on the quirk train. But The Gods Must be Crazy, La Cage Aux Folles, and back to Britain again finally with The Full Monty with a bunch of stuff in between.
Now comes The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret), a film directed by Eran Kolirin. I think it is one of the first quirk train films I will never learn to hate. I would never watch Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful with its oversimplistic paptrap about the holocaust. But although Kolirin's story is about national and racial interface, there is not a feeling of stereotypes, just types we are likely to find in our life.
Anyone who sees this film will likely never forget the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra. I can't recall a recent film that is such a creative fount of visual humor . It is aided by the fact that almost every scene has a baby blue uniform on. It is one of the great unknowns of the universe but most humans grimace to a grin when they see a grown man in this hue.
The film is best explained by its online tag within the first minutes of the films: "Once-not long ago-a small Egyptian police band arrived in Israel. Not many remember this...It wasn't that important." But it is important for the band members and those that assist them when they are stranded out in a isolated cinderbox of a town in the desert.
A film about all male band is going to need a woman to keep it buoyant. Ronit Elkabetz plays Dina, a single independent restaurant owner is analagous to an entire harbor. Th scenes with Lieutenant-colonel Tawfiq Zacharya played by Sasson Gabat are poignant and lovely. The film uses long takes and sweet comic timing with a few intercut situations where the various members of the band interacting in the small town such as the man who waits for his sweetheart's phone call eveynight outside a payphone or a local that gets hooked up with a goth on a rollerboogie blind date.
The Band's Visit feels less like a film than a place you spend time with some interesting characters. That makes it a rare film for me, because how many films can one say that about. It would be a very short list with Bottle Rocket and maybe a couple others.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:07 AM
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