"A+" Rating by Robert W. Hammerle

"The Band's Visit" is simply an exquisite picture that would have clearly been one of the Oscar nominees for this past year's Best Foreign Film had it not been for the arcane rules of the Academy. It's the functional equivalent of taking a languid canoe ride down Florida's gorgeous Suwannee River. You leave this marvelous film a better person than when you entered.

The story concerns a group of Egyptian Police officers who play classical music in a band that finds itself stranded while touring Israel. Taking wrong directions, they mistakenly arrive at a small Israeli town where they are forced to spend the evening. Telling the story of that one day, the band's interaction with local Israelis is as emotionally evocative as it is genuinely heartwarming.

Seldom will you see a movie where so little happens and yet so much occurs. While there are a number of special performances, there are two stunning ones.

Sasson Gabay plays Tewfiq Zakaria, the leader of the orchestra. When first seen, he appears to be autocratic, distant and impersonal. However, once he meets Ms. Ronit Elkabetz, who plays Dina, the owner of a small diner, he slowly starts to shed his layers of hard bark and reveal a tender, compassionate soul. Ms. Elkabetz's Dina is a wry, sensuous woman approaching middle age who still retains a sultry allure that suggests an extraordinarily beautiful woman in years gone by.

Forced to spend the night in this small town, Mr. Gabay and Ms. Elkabetz go out for the evening for a bite to eat. In the process, they do a slow dance around one another as they gradually reveal intimacies of their past. Their relationship, while at all times platonic, forms a love story that is similar to the relationship of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in last years superb "Once."

What sets this movie apart from a simple love story is the fact that these wonderful, otherwise insignificant Israeli and Egyptian citizens teach us a lesson in humanity. Ms. Elkabetz is a single woman with several husbands in her past who never took the time to have the children she wanted. Mr. Gabay, on the other hand, is a widowed Egyptian who lost his son and wife because of his own inability to understand their needs.

Neither whines, and both accept their fate with dignity and a sense of hopeful resignation. They are decent people in a frequently indecent world, and their courtesies toward the other forms a foundation of one of the warmest movies made in the past couple years.

Given the fact that much of this movie is in Arabic with English subtitles, I took my Saudi exchange student, "Z." Despite its total lack of any special effects, much less action sequences, he too loved this film, not the least of which being that he could respond to it emotionally while the rest of the audience waited for the subtitles.

From Tibet to Darfur to Iraq to Chechnya to the Gaza Strip, human beings continue to visit unspeakable carnage on other human beings. "The Band's Visit" politely reminds us of the inner decency that binds mankind together as one. Romantic, sweet and inspiring, this movie is special in every sense of the word.