Five months ago, Israeli writer-director Eran Kolirin was fielding questions in a Toronto hotel restaurant about “The Band’s Visit,” his delightful debut feature about 24 hours spent by an Egyptian band in the wrong — but oh-so-right — Israeli town.
He was explaining his problems with the film being described as a “crowd pleaser.”
“Crowd pleasing is a very degrading term to use,” he said. Don’t get him wrong. He wasn’t being ungrateful but was being thoughtful about the pressures put on filmmakers.
“But, there’s a big difference between doing a movie where what leads you is your aesthetic choices and doing a movie and what leads you is wanting to please,” said Kolirin. “I have no problem with people going out of the movie pleased.”
And they have been, since “The Band’s Visit” premiered last year at the Cannes Film Festival. It was in a very special class of gemlike works from first-time feature directors, including Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parannoud’s “Persepolis” and Lebanese actor-director Nadine Labaki’s upcoming “Caramel,” that have given audiences fresh views of life in the Middle East.
For the 35-year-old Kolirin, life in Israel includes a home in Tel Aviv with his wife and 2 1/2-year-old son, Doan. He loves Israel’s second-largest city, he says with a smile but no irony, for its “90 percent humidity” and its messiness. “It’s really the only place I understand.”
Kolirin was far from his balmy home when he made a brief stopover in Denver for “The Band’s Visit,” slated to open at the Chez Artiste on Friday.
Sitting for a photographer, Kolirin has his knit cap pulled down hard on his brow. Leaps from plane to plane have laid him low. He feels lousy.
A breakfast bowl of matzo ball soup drains some of the green from his gills. “Is it fresh?” he asks the waitress in richly accented English before ordering.
“Yes, we make it here,” she says, after mistakenly schooling him on what matzo is.
When she goes he asks, “Do you think it’s a crime to have matzo for breakfast?”
Like its creator, “The Band’s Visit” is rife with an understated humor, apparent from the moment members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrive in Israel and no one meets them at the airport.
Perhaps this delicate amusement is captured best in the expression of restaurant proprietor Dina as the band — clad in very proper powder blue uniforms, instruments in tow — arrives outside her modest establishment in the wrong Israeli town.
Ronit Elkabetz (a director in her own right) is terrifically appealing as the earthy restaurateur. Standing in the doorway, she gazes at them, no condescension, just a kind of look of eternally amused appreciation. There’s no Arab Culture Center in town, she informs them. There’s no culture period.
“It took a long time to get money for the film,” Kolirin says. His script, like his characters, is winsomely odd. “It’s a kind of a strange story,” he admits.
Some skeptics asked, “Could it happen now? Why are they not talking about politics?”
Kolirin agrees there is internal pressure on Israeli artists to address conflict. But, he says, “there is also an outside expectation of us. Not only to be killed in the realistic world, but to be killed as an artist serving some preconceptions the world has about what the Israeli filmmaker should talk about.”
A TV movie called “The Long Journey,” which he wrote and directed, helped Kolirin get the nod to direct “The Band’s Visit.”
“I think at the end of the day, there is a quiet respect for humanity, for simple humanity,” Kolirin replies when asked why “The Band’s Visit” has struck such a chord. The film took a special jury prize at Cannes, and awards at any number of other festivals.
“That you can reach and touch people’s skin sometimes. That you can just talk to them in the middle of this mess — when movies yell at you, or manipulate you to anger. Or hit you in the face. I think people related to the quietness.”
So, is he very quiet?
“No,” he replies with a grin. “I talk all the time. Haven’t you noticed?”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy @denverpost.com; blogs.denver postcom/madmoviegoer
