THE TRIBE Review

THE TRIBE review by Josef Rodriguez.

A Ukrainian school for the deaf is also a breeding ground for drug dealing, prostitution, and unimaginably savage behavior that sends a good-hearted young man into a downward spiral of addiction, hatred, and murder. Such is life in Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s debut feature, The Tribe, a film with plenty of words, none of them spoken or subtitled, leaving the audience to guess what is being said through body language and the raw emotion of the performances. No character names are revealed until the closing credits, and there are no hints given as to who these kids were before they were enrolled in the school. All that matters is that they’re here now, and they have nowhere else to go.

A cinematic pioneer of sorts, The Tribe builds on ideas explored by Slaboshpitsky in his short films, but on a much grander scale. The audience feels each of the film’s 130 minutes, and a series of hugely impressively, extremely long tracking shots – there can’t possibly be more than 100 cuts in the entire film – coupled with the complete absence of close-ups forces the audience to recognize the physicality of each performance. Each actor relies on everything but their voice as character development to the point where certain hisses, jerks, and slaps are only associated with one person. In their silence, each person’s body functions to develop a voice of its own.

The general arc of the story involves the school’s newest student as he adjusts to the social hierarchy on and off campus. Some of the kids are in charge of operating the extensive drug trafficking network that exists in the dormitories. Others are used to escort two of the school’s most successful prostitutes as they navigate the local truck stops in search of clients. Getting caught up in the mix of this illicit underworld of sorts, the newbie begins to develop feelings for one of the young women who sells herself, effectively shunning himself from the organization when he sabotages their work as a result of his feelings for her.

The rest of his story is nothing but tragedy as their operation grows while he watches helplessly and, no pun intended, without any say as to what his beloved chooses to do. In her case, it’s leave the country and continue her business elsewhere, in search of new clients and greater successes. Meanwhile, the newbie is relentlessly teased and tormented by his classmates, to escalating results. It culminates in a gorgeous final shot, reminiscent of the infamous hospital raid in Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies, a film that, at 145 minutes, only has 39 shots.

Pretty much everything about The Tribe is unbelievably impressive, and there has most definitely never been a film of such intricate physical choreography coupled with its unflinching emotional impact. Rivaling films known for their choreographic olympics like Russian Ark and Birdman, The Tribe may actually surpass those films purely for its mastery of lighting, the speed with which it is able to change locations, and the stability its camera has while moving through those locations.

There are many scenes in the film that force the camera to move from dark to light, tight to wide, and in to out. Yet, regardless of the scenery changes, the frame is always impeccably lit and shot, seamless transitions abound. The shots themselves all function as short films of themselves. Each scene has a specific purpose, that purpose is set up through the unspoken dialogue, and the ending of each scene is punctuated by some kind of tragic or comic reversal that doesn’t pronounce itself as part of the ongoing story as much as it just becomes one piece of a larger framework. This structure can get repetitive, but the very nature of these extended takes forces each shot to have some kind of “point,” so as to not allow them to start seeming like arbitrary components of the aesthetic.

It’s often more impressive than the film itself, which struggles to stay consistent throughout but rides on a nearly flawless second half that is unbearably tense, unflinchingly graphic, and unabashedly confrontational. Its utilization of graphic sex is actually one of its stronger selling points, as made clear through the marketing campaign which features its two main characters laying nude in each other’s arms. But, the sex scenes in The Tribe are anything but meaningless, and actually end up adding a great deal to the film by highlighting the actual physicality of the act in lieu of heightening the pleasure aspects of it.

For its entire runtime, characters interact with each other through harsh physical gestures and hand movements that are completely foreign to most of the world’s hearing population, so allowing these characters to express themselves physically in a way that everyone can understand allows for a new plateau of connection that would have otherwise been absent. The acts performed are not particularly over-the-top or outlandish, but they’re nothing like what the average viewer would see in a Hollywood production, and it’s refreshing to see a film that doesn’t necessarily admonish its characters for wanting to engage with each other sexually.

On the contrary, the only scenes in this film that could be categorized as anything less than soul-crushing are the moments when we see our two young protagonists lying together, rid entirely of clothes and inhibitions, sharing the only thing they really can without enduring the scrutiny of their peers. Once this self-imposed eden is taken from them, the aftermath is all the more impactful entirely because we’ve watched them open up to each other in ways they never could with their classmates. It’s absolutely beautiful storytelling, and Slaboshpitsky handles it so exceedingly well that it’s almost hard to believe it was crafted by the mind of such an inexperienced feature director, this being his debut.

But beyond the idea of connection and safety and “fitting in,” The Tribe finds direction in its exploration of an increasing tolerance of bullying in schools and social settings where large groups of young adults congregate to interact. Watching the film, some of the situations are admittedly overblown to the point where the plausibility is called into question, but the school in The Tribe, which is run more like a prison complex, is not far off from the average, low-income public school, and its extreme take on bullying is also not far off from the reality. Slaboshpitsky seems to be commenting on the spiritual and mental corruption – in both children and their superiors – that occurs when an otherwise well-adjusted child is forced to assimilate into a lifestyle of crime and debauchery beyond their wildest expectations.

The Tribe is a shocking wake up call. I’ll never be able to read another tragic headline about some kid walking into school with a gun, ready to shoot the school bully because he went home everyday feeling scared for his life. We often forget to contextualize these events and realize how easy it is to change into what you need to be when your environment no longer allows you to be what you want to be. It’s a film that almost subconsciously puts these things into perspective. Unsupervised youth is the stuff of nightmares, and The Tribe isn’t afraid to show us what they’re capable of.

The Tribe is now playing in select theaters.