Movie review: ‘The Tribe’

Love it or hate it — and there will be plenty in both camps — there is nothing else like The Tribe, at once a searing, singular vision of a particular time and place and a brutal metaphor for the wounded human condition.

Set among a group of delinquent kids in a decrepit, dingy high school for the deaf in Ukraine, director Miroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s harrowing film is totally in sign language and has neither spoken dialogue nor subtitles.

The result is that, for more than two hours, viewers are immersed in an incomprehensible universe, having to absorb the story completely from context and to pay strict attention. That’s much like what the characters must have felt many times when they were first exploring the wider, hearing world.

Grigoriy Fesenko plays a new student who quickly falls in with a group of thug classmates who run a prostitution ring involving two female students. The Tribe follows him as he works his way up the criminal food chain. Slowly, it builds to a climax that is both devastating and despairing.

Along the way, viewers get to know other students, including Anna, whose back-alley abortion makes for extremely tough viewing. Slaboshpytskiy works in long, unflinching takes, never turning away as much as you might want him to.

The level of violence may be shocking, but its effect is heightened by the fact that we’re not used to seeing otherly-abled people depicted this way, as unrepentant bad guys. In intent and execution, The Tribe is about as far from an Afterschool Special and “The More You Know” sermonizing as is possible.

In sign language; no subtitles

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This story was originally published August 7, 2015 at 7:31 AM with the headline "Movie review: ‘The Tribe’."