The Tribe

Drafthouse Films | Release Date: June 17, 2015

7.7	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 43 Ratings

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cinecineJun 17, 2015

No need words, there is a storytelling upon cinematic language. The Tribe make you question the power of images. Think again and watch the films you see before...

2 of 2 users found this helpful20

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ScribeHardJun 19, 2015

A feature film with no traditional dialogue or subtitles might be a technical and artistic feat, but it is still a film that is missing a critical component. The lack of that component all but demands compensation in another area of theA feature film with no traditional dialogue or subtitles might be a technical and artistic feat, but it is still a film that is missing a critical component. The lack of that component all but demands compensation in another area of the film. In this case, that area would have to be story, and the story here simply doesn’t work.

Feeling like an acting class was challenged to make a student film with no dialogue, The Tribe, in less than two hours, went from my Most Anticipated Film to my Biggest Disappointment of 2015.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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skeptamisticOct 3, 2015

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Do not see it alone, nor with a child.

In post-screening dialogue at the Crested Butte Film Festival 2015, another audience member suggested that The Tribe evokes Lord of the Flies. That might be a most apt analogue. What consumed me was the question of why my response to The Tribe differed from my years-ago response to Pulp Fiction. One guess: Pulp Fiction is animated by aurally unchallenged, articulate, self-aware monsters. The words of Jules and Vincent—“Aw, man, I shot Marvin in the face!” as if he’d merely spilled a glass of milk—frame their decisive brutality so we rapidly recover from witnessing it. The dialogue in The Tribe might crackle just as well, but those of us who do not sign do not know. The Tribe is one of the most visually dependent films you will ever watch. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy offers us no subtitles or voiceover, and uses no score or even a track of bassy, rumbling menace. He need not. The only sound we hear is of the action, including the tapping and slapping of the sign language dialogue as it frames and punctuates one long wrenching shot after another. The only sustained sound of the human voice we hear is the sobbing agony of Anna (Yana Novikova) in a scene that left me struggling to breathe. With no spoken words to bend its brutally blue and red light, The Tribe sears us.

In the post-screening dialogue, rapporteur Jack Hanley suggested spaghetti Western as a genre for The Tribe. He’s on to something. The film opens by following Sergey (Grigoriy Fesenko) “into town,” a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf. Through distant shots that make him seem smaller than he is, we see Sergey assimilate into the school’s gang culture of crime and subsequently assume the role of pimp in a lorry yard a brief drive from the school, where several of the film’s turning points form. Later attracted to Anna in a way that disrupts the gang’s business—and perhaps saturated by the duplicity of the school’s official enablers of crime—Sergey turns on them and the student gang bosses, exacting macabre revenge, apparently after himself being killed. In the final scenes of retribution, he seems physically larger, laconic—that’s not ironic—and brutally methodical.

Women in the CBFF audience expressed a view that Slaboshpytskiy’s depiction of women in the film is horrible. The treatment of the two main women, Anna and Svetka (Rosa Babiy), is. Upon Sergey’s arrival at the school, we see two favorable views of women, the first of the principal (Tatiana Radchenko) handling an all-students ceremony in the courtyard and then managing a flow of visitors in her office with executive comportment. The second is of a history teacher (Ludmila Rudenko) in a subsequent class session, in which her authoritative poise manages a male student troublemaker (Alexander Dsiadevich). Yet the timekeeping bell, which in this school is a flashing lamp on the front wall of the classroom, interrupts her. The overarching system defeats an otherwise strong woman in a way that is utterly ordinary to the context. From then, the indignities of Anna and Svetka are the only way we see the women of The Tribe. The single moment of joy we notice, as Jack Hanley mentioned, is their possibility of a trip to Italy from snow-packed Ukraine—but for the purpose of extending their prostitution across national lines.

So the American women in the CBFF audience have a point about the grim circumstances of the Ukrainian women in The Tribe. Perhaps inconsistently with a spaghetti Western theme, Anna’s experiences are pivot points in the story, none of them liberating. She moves from being a prostitute to the lorry drivers, and then to Sergey; and then to being his lover, with a difficult consequence that only a woman fully understands; and then to being Sergey’s victim after all that she had already endured. Yana Novikova’s work as Anna earned her the CBFF’s Special Jury Award for Outstanding Debut Performance “for her astonishing and courageous turn” in The Tribe. Now, dare to consider this possibility: that her best work—and that of Slaboshpytskiy and all the others of The Tribe—is still ahead of them. I like the sound of that future, with or without subtitles or voiceover.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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hotfromcauldronJul 9, 2015

Communication of thought distinguishes man from animal. In the twisted lord of the flies - Tribe - the audience is forced to interpret the actions of a pack of thieving survivors. It’s like watching the lion's cage at a zoo.
And a facinationCommunication of thought distinguishes man from animal. In the twisted lord of the flies - Tribe - the audience is forced to interpret the actions of a pack of thieving survivors. It’s like watching the lion's cage at a zoo.
And a facination with the sounds of silence dissolves into a tiresome experience after two hours - even though there are images worth a thousand words. Eastern Boys - another European film exploring similar territory- is far more effective.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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EpicLadySpongeMar 11, 2016

The Tribe is fresh-loving madness. I'll love the Tribe as long you love it too. Otherwise, we're not equal at all. The Tribe is the best way to waste time and never asking for it back again.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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fairbrotherJun 7, 2017

The idea of a film set among deaf and seriously wayward schoolkids, whose sign language communication remains unsubtitled throughout, is a good one. And there are moments where this wordless drama, studded with some unflinching cruelty,The idea of a film set among deaf and seriously wayward schoolkids, whose sign language communication remains unsubtitled throughout, is a good one. And there are moments where this wordless drama, studded with some unflinching cruelty, hovers frustratingly close to it's promise. But alas The Tribe is a textbook example of a fledgling auteur grasping for greatness on terms that expose him as a pretentious, exploitative hack. Aping Larry Clark, Michael Haneke, and plenty others besides, Miroslav Slaboskpitsky's debut feature is a determinedly cold, bleak picture intent on defying good taste, daring stuffy critics and square viewers alike to dismiss it; but it's provocations, finally, have nothing to say except "I am the new wunderkind of arthouse sadomasochism! Bask in the chilly glow of my real-time pacing, detached compositions, and blunt depictions of sex and suffering!" Bold, for sure, but shallow and nasty with it.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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