The Band's Visit (2007)

The story of The Band's Visit is very simple. An eight-member Egyptian police band "Alexander Memorial Band" was invited to a place in Israel to participate in the opening performance of the local Arab Cultural Center. A desert town with no stores and no features. The only one who could ask for directions was a small restaurant with no customers. The proprietress Dina replied: "There is no Arab cultural center, no Israeli cultural center, no cultural center here." The last bus left, and the bandleader Tawfiq could only accept it. The restaurant owner's suggestion was to stay for one night, as there were no hotels in the area, so the band members had to be scattered and crowded into several households.

According to the current popular movie plot, this story has two development directions, one is the horror film path of "being attacked in a strange place", and the other is the road film path of "inspired by strangers to understand the true meaning of life". In this movie, the night passed, nothing happened, the band members left completely, and there were no events that affected the path of life. Just one night, several members had the opportunity to ask questions they would normally avoid, or to take a look at their own lives from strangers. Sasson Gabai, who played bandleader Tawfiq, won the European Film Academy Award for Best Actor, and his emotional changes in the face of the actively curious Dina showed us the richness of his character.

This movie is full of moments that make people laugh, but there are also many moments that make people sigh and even let the audience down with the characters, which shows the success of the characters.

Many travelers in The Band's Visit resonate with scenes, such as suddenly coming to an unfamiliar place. What often happens is not that someone has bad intentions against you and wants to hit you, but that the locals treat you as transparent. Think about the indifference that I usually face when facing tourists who look around.

Yet, in a setting like Egypt-Israel, I couldn't help but wonder if the stories had another meaning. The most direct conclusion is that whether it is an enemy or a friend, everyone has their own troubles. What everyone cares about most is nothing more than family, work, lost dreams, men and women – can’t they live together peacefully? If you think of the characters in the movie as having some kind of symbolic meaning, representing the various symbols of the relationship between Israel and the Arab countries, then the simplest explanation is that even if the two parties cannot fall in love with each other, they can at least understand each other, or simply Don't be obsessed with finding answers for history, perhaps dull and uninteresting compromises are more meaningful to ordinary people than illusory ideals.

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