THE TRIBE (Miroslav Slaboshpitsky). 132 minutes. Rating: NNN
Where to watch: iTunes
The Tribe is audacious, but of course that’s the point. Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s first feature wears its daring on its sleeve, every storytelling decision calculated to make the viewer strain to keep up or flinch in horror.
Unfolding in long, fluid master shots, the film is set in a world populated almost entirely by deaf characters who communicate with one another in Ukrainian sign language – untranslated and un-subtitled.
We’re thus doubly distanced from the narrative about a young man (Grigoriy Fisenko) who arrives at a boarding school and is very soon thrown into an exploitative underworld of predatory gangsters and prostituted students.
Slaboshpitsky quickly establishes this world’s power structure and gives our hero a goal beyond survival in the form of a young woman (Yana Novikova) for whom he develops real feelings. Its lack of dialogue isn’t the only element that connects The Tribe to actual silent films: its simplistic morality – a man trying to save a woman from a life of dishonour – is straight out of D.W. Griffith.
Visually, it’s striking. Narratively, it’s one long nightmare of confrontation and misery, with Slaboshpitsky setting up ugly situations just so he can make them uglier. The Tribe marches down its grim path, building to a climax that’s as original as it is contrived. I guess that’s something.
