Sometimes the best here are the films without buzz. Yesterday afternoon, during a lull in the ongoing hysteria that is Cannes, I wandered into something called
Bikur Hatizmoret (translated as
The Band's Visit), a first feature from Israeli filmmaker
Eran Kolirin [pictured above].
I went because I could. The science of survival here is to go where the crowds are not.. And I was hoping to catch some z's and sit near the aisle for a quick departure.
As it turned out, I finally found a film at the 60th to love. Please, members of the jury, you MUST give the prize for best actress to Ronit Elkabetz. The audience went for her and Band, too, to judge by the applause and shouting that wouldn't let the visibly moved filmmakers and cast leave the theater.
Band is a small movie – but in the way Chekhov is small. It's about an Egyptian Police band that arrives in Israel to play at an initiation ceremony for an Arab cultural center – but through a series of mishaps, the men end up stranded in a desolate, almost forgotten Israeli town, somewhere in the heart of the desert. “Not many people remember this,” says the narrator at the outset. “It wasn't that important.” It wasn't that important. Oh my God, pure Chekhov!
To the band's rescue comes Dina (Elkabetz), the tough, gorgeous, husky-voiced owner of a restaurant (that seems devoid of customers), who sees that the men are fed and lodged for the night till the morning bus. The stranded band's arrival becomes a catalyst compelling interaction between the musicians and their Israeli hosts. Their interwoven dialogues open up whole lives, past, present, future.
Especially moving are scenes in which the forthcoming Dina reveals a past of messy divorces; draws out super-reserved band leader Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai), who's haunted by a tragic past; and wordlessly flirts with Simon, the band's hot-to-trot pretty boy, who ends up in her bed. In an earlier very funny sequence, Simon teaches a naive Israeli boy how to hit on a girl. And in one of the best moments I've seen in any movie, the guy describes in a rhapsodic, untranslated Arabic, what it's like to make love to a woman.
This exquisite film is unafraid of simplicity and silence – the better to let resonate the fascination for these Egyptians of Dina's bounteous sensuality, and the growing rapprochement between Arab and Israeli. A poignant Chekhovian figure, the beautiful Dina is stuck in a life without great prospects, but remains, as in Uncle Vanya, determined to endure.
As I write, I can see aging bad boy Roman Polanski, silvering at the temples, holding forth on the telly. He's in Cannes, along with 32 other directors, as part of Chacun son Cinema, an omnibus film of 3 minute shorts, created for the 60th anniversary. And there's Walter Salles, looking totally adorable ...
Celebrity Alert! Yesterday I was loitering in the empty Palais, when Leonardo di Caprio went speeding past. He was all suited up and flanked in military formation by what I suppose was an entourage. Really, it was like something from an air show. Leonardo's here with his film The 11th Hour, a documentary continuing Al Gore's efforts to save the planet and us from ourselves. I followed Leonardo and entourage for a while, but the inevitable guard barred my way. So as part of my interview series, Notes From Under the Red Carpet, I asked the guard about his work. “I've been coming for twelve friggin' years” he told me, “but enough is enough. I'm tired of being on my feet all day.”
Where was I? Oh, with the fest now in Day Five, the buzzed-about films are terrific too. Like Michael Moore's Sicko, which was everything one hoped. It's a biting, poignant, often funny indictment of an American health care system dominated by insurance companies, which is quietly hastening the deaths of everyone but the rich. One guy interviewed by Moore lost two fingers in an accident, and was forced by Big Insurance to choose between replacing one for 12 grand and the other for 60. He went with the 12.
Moore's rage is palpable and rousing. You'll laugh and cheer when you see his boatloads of sick Americans, streaking toward Cuba in search of medical care. Yeah, some French and Canadians here faulted him for idealizing their health systems, which are plenty flawed. I'm sure they have a point. But the over-simplification is good, part of a package designed to reach Americans not in the choir, folks so dumbed down by anti-”big government” pieties, they can't identify their oppressors. Moore's larger message: make America a world of we, not me.
# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/20/2007 06:34:00 AM
Comments (1)
I love Ronit and have the good fortune to know her as well but it should be noted that "The Band's Visit" is in Un Certain Regard and not eligible for Best Actress.
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posted by @ 5/23/2007 5:13 AM
