Film / Reviews
The Tribe
The Tribe (18)
Ukraine 2014 132 mins Dir: Miroslav Slaboshpitsky Cast: Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich
‘Scum with sign language’ might be an apt way of describing tough Ukranian drama The Tribe, although that glib description only gives half the story. Set in a grim boarding school for deaf children, the kicker comes with the film’s approach: it’s shot entirely without voiceover or subtitles.
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Any response to director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s film will therefore depend entirely on whether one can read sign language or not. Those who can are of course more likely to relate to the film’s empathetic depiction of a world without speech. If the opposite is true (the director himself was forced to rely on translators), the movie becomes a much more challenging experience, forcing viewers to scrutinise the body language of the leading players in order to glean what’s going on.
However, this is not a criticism. After all, human beings might be separated by language barriers but we’re universally connected by our animal physicality and behaviour. It’s to the credit of the director and his actors that they’re able to convey a host of complex information through the most minute of gestures. The story centrally focuses on the school’s newest arrival, teenager Sergey (Grigoriy Fesenko), who’s barely put his bag down before he’s inducted into ‘the tribe’: a gang of delinquent, drug-dealing teens who operate a brutal hierarchical system within the walls. They also pimp out girls as prostitutes to local truck drivers, and when Sergey falls in love with one of them, it has horrific consequences.
Essentially a silent movie, one that serves as a potent reminder of the importance of physical performance, the film is a noteworthy technical accomplishment with cinematographer/editor Valentyn Vasyanovych’s long takes often forcing us to gaze into a horrendous cinematic abyss. The movie’s unremittingly steely, bleak gaze is however troubling: the protracted sexual scenes between Sergey and eventual lover Elena (Yana Novikova) hover uneasily between exploitative porn and frankness, although again the actors are able to subtly convey the characters’ growing intimacy through little more than a touch of a hand.
In fact, the same problem applies to the movie as a whole. Although the film’s approach is to some extent novel and arresting, what is being said is hardly innovative, nor does it have the emotional nuance to make the 130 minute slog worthwhile. It’s a familiar tale dressed up in unfamiliar clothing, and a gratuitous, extended scene involving a horrendous back street abortion only serves to muddy the waters even further. It’s no masterpiece, but a bold, audacious experiment nonetheless.
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