Film Reviews	The Kindness of Strangers by George Sax

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was back in Israel last week, once again promoting the Bush administration’s no-brainer, non-starter Palestinian-Israeli peace initiative. She arrived in time for the latest flare-up of tit-for-tat, cross-border violence. (Of course, the Israeli tat is usually more devastating than the Palestinian…well, you know what I mean.)

This same week brings to our parts the internationally acclaimed, award-winning Israeli motion picture, The Band’s Visit, about an imagined encounter between a few “ordinary” Israeli Jews and Egyptian Arabs. Eran Kolirin’s film never even obliquely alludes to the all-too-prevalent Arab-Israeli conflict. It makes no discernible gesture toward the distrust, resentments and hatreds that have so characterized attitudes and actions between these two Middle East peoples for at least a century.

Kolirin’s serio-comic movie is concerned with the possibility of unexpected and unexpectedly meaningful encounters between individuals whose lives are certainly dissimilar, but who rather easily relate to each other’s experiences. It’s hard to avoid the impression that he intends to convey an implicit lesson, but if so, it’s so shrewdly concealed in the film’s smoothly attractive texture that you needn’t be conscious of it to enjoy what is being offered.

These encounters begin shortly after a small police department band from Alexandria arrives by bus in an Israeli desert hamlet to play at an Arab cultural center, only to find it’s in the wrong town. Unable to obtain any assistance from their embassy by phone, the men are forced to rely on the at-first semi-reluctant hospitality of several townsfolk. The most forthright and welcoming of these residents is Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), a slim, attractive, slightly blowsy woman of perhaps 38-40 years whose lunchroom the band’s confused members stop at for directions.

The eight Egyptian men are already a little uncertain. They range in age from the late twenties to the late sixties and they’re aware that their department superiors are considering a proposal to abolish their jobs. Their leader, Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai), a middle-aged man of somewhat stiff, moderately punctilious behavior, resists giving credence to this possibility. He’s unable to impose the sense of discipline and cohesion he seems to wish for, but beneath his starchy demeanor there are glimpses of a troubled soul.

Tawfiq is particularly vexed by his undisciplined junior musician, Khaled (Saleh Bakri), a skeptically unimpressed admirer of American singer-trumpeter Chet Baker’s coolness. At one impromptu opportunity, he does Baker singing a few bars of “My Funny Valentine” for the benefit of a cute and surprised young woman in the bus station.

Kolirin’s film unrolls like a deadpan shaggy dog story. At first, it vaguely resembles a collaboration between Garrison Keillor and Samuel Beckett. The director’s wry, dry style enhances the effect. One inherently droll long shot of the eight musicians lined up in a tableau against the flat, parched countryside in their incongruous powder blue uniforms has a subtly comic opera flavor.

As the Egyptians and Israelis interact over a 24-hour period, the film softens into a bittersweet comedy. Temporary connections are made, personal revelations given, insights drawn.

Kolirin has crafted these elements into a quietly engaging little movie, one that may also be too measured and contained, and perhaps more conventional than he intended. At the end, it seems to be whispering “only connect,” but E.M. Forster’s famous urging came with his recognition of the worldly forces that make connecting so difficult.

On the other hand, the way things are going, the witty Kolirin stands at least as much chance as the indefatigably prim and evasive Condi Rice does to advance Arab-Jewish conciliation.