STUDIO: Sony Pictures Classics
RELEASE DATE: July 29, 2008
STARRING: Shlomi Avraham, Salah Bakri, Ronit Elkabetz, Sasson Gabai, Uri Gabriel, Imad Jabarin, and Ahuva Keren
WRITTEN BY: Eran Kolirin
DIRECTED BY: Eran Kolirin
FEATURES:The Band's Visit: Making the Fairy Tale
Photo Gallery

Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit was the audience award winner at the Munich and Warsaw Film Festivals and was almost an arthouse sensation when it opened earlier this year in the States. Honestly, I can't quite figure out why it wasn't a bigger hit, at least in major cities. It's the kind of heartwarming and light-on-its-feet foreign film that usually builds a significant following through word-of-mouth and plays in small theaters for months. A well-deserved Oscar nomination or even shortlist consideration might have helped push a small movie like this to a wider audience but the mouth-breathers who make up the random rules for the Foreign category deemed The Band's Visit ineligible because there's too much English in it. A film about an Egyptian band who spends time in a small town in Israel was essentially deemed not foreign enough. Sigh. What's totally ridiculous is that The Band's Visit is about being a foreigner in a strange land, about how we have more in common than we think. Thematically, it seems like the perfect film for the Oscars, but that's a category that will always remain a mystery.

What's not a mystery is that The Band's Visit will find a loyal and faithful audience on DVD. It's the kind of charmer that at least half of the people who rent it will recommend to a friend or family member. Kolirin's is not a perfect film, but it's pretty close and it's certainly better than four-fifths of the crap that studios have tried to pass off as summer entertainment in this awful year. Do your part - rent and recommend. Thousands of others will be doing the same.

The poignant Band's Visit is about a fading Egyptian police band who arrive in Israel to play at the Arab Cultural Center. After a misunderstanding regarding the name of the small town that they're supposed to go to by bus, they end up essentially in the middle of nowhere. They're forced to spend the night in a small Israeli town that looks like it has a population of roughly a hundred. Issues of age, sexuality, loneliness, and, of course, music come to the foreground, but all in a very subtle way. None of The Band's Visit feels forced. It's a slice of life on an unusual Israeli night with only the slight tinge of what I consider a final act mistake in the script that holds it back from true greatness. There are wonderful moments in The Band's Visit - a conversation on a park bench is one of the best scenes of the year - and the lead performances all have a truthfulness that's missing from a lot of cinema lately. It's the rare film that's truly heartwarming without ever being manipulative. I highly recommend giving this band a listen.

The DVD of The Band's Visit, like the theatrical release and the screwed-up nature of the Academy Awards, is a little disappointing. The video and audio is typically-for-Sony good but there's a dearth of special features on The Band's Visit with just a lonely featurette and a photo gallery. It would have been nice to have a commentary or a more elaborate look at the making of the film, but Sony probably correctly assumes that this is a rental and not a purchase for most DVD viewers. At least not yet.