Unimportant Events Makes For Thoroughly Engaging Storytelling In The Band's Visit

Trips tend to never go as planned but for Lt. Col. Tawfiq Zacharaya (Sasson Gabai), things have been going particularly troublesome for himself and his fellow band members. They have come to Egypt to perform some music at an important local ceremony, but the scheduled ride meant to transport them to where they need to go never came. Thus, they're now trapped in a foreign land with no transportation, no shelter and very little money to speak of. Those alone are all troublesome elements but the fact that there's some turmoil going on amidst the various band members, particularly between Zacharaya and the younger and rebellious Khaled (Saleh Bakri), are only adding to the tension.


Luckily, salvation arrives in the form of local motel owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), who offers them shelter for the night while they try to get ahold of some new transportation. Their stay will be brief at this motel but plenty of enlightening conversations transpire in their stay as cultures clash and past events from a variety of characters become relevant in the present. The dialogue-heavy plot of The Band's Visit is particularly centered around the outgoing Dina and the more timid and restrained Zacharaya as well as Khaled, a self-proclaimed ladies man, tagging along with one of Dina's relatives as said relative tries to win the heart of a girl on a date.

Creating a dialogue-oriented screenplay that's all about following the intimate and seemingly unimportant moments of life has served many movies well in the past and you can add The Band's Visit as another successful entry in this subgenre. This is very much a casual hang-out movie that feels like a kindred spirit to something like Richard Linklater's Dazed And Confused in its relaxed yet thoroughly engaging aesthetic. As some opening text states, these band members staying over at Dina's hotel is not some great historical event, these people did not alter the entire world and how people view it in their brief stay in Isreal.

Even on an intimate human level, Tawfiq Zacharaya and his band members do not help people find true permanent love or discover their long-lost sons or anything like that. Instead, it's all about these easygoing realistic dialogue exchanges that help unearth fresh new layers of the assorted characters, particularly Zacharaya and Dina. The various pieces of dialogue, penned by screenwriter Eran Kolirin who also directs the project, have an impressive realistic quality to them, there's an authentic awkwardness in the way these strangers interact in scenes like a dinnertime conversation between a trio of Dina's relatives and a trio of Zacharaya's band members, that makes them all feel like actual human beings.

Further enhancing how the various players in The Band's Visit feel like living breathing people is the way these dialogue exchanges organically unearth more tragic parts of our protagonist Zacharaya. This fellow is given a tremendous performance from Sasson Gabai who makes the default stoic and restrained nature of his character incredibly riveting and there's an equally absorbing quality to Gabai's execution of a critical third act monologue when Zacharaya opens up about the pain he feels regarding his sons. It's a heartbreaking moment of vulnerability that Gabai aces in performing while it also serves as a peak demonstration of just how well-written Kolirin's script is.

Sasson Gabai isn't the only performer to leave a strong performance in The Band's Visit though, as Ronit Elkabetz is also mighty impressive as Dina, the more outgoing yin to Zacharaya's muted yang. Elkabetz is an utter delight on-screen and has some of the best dialogue deliveries in the entire motion picture. Scenes she shares with Gabai as their two characters enjoy a night out on the town also demonstrate some subtly astute filmmaking that reinforces the more realistic nature of the screenplay. The conversations between Zacharaya and Dina are always shown engaging in conversation in more everyday locations, like a booth in a restaurant or a bench on the sidewalk. These locales feel truly lived in in the way they're filmed, they come across as actual places you or I could just walk into. It's a lovely visual compliment to the prominent dialogue in the great dramedy The Band's Visit which is all about exploring the dramatic possibilities offered up by everyday circumstances.