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Mar 17, 2016 Web Exclusive By Chris Tinkham

Ukranian writer/director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s extraordinary feature film debut, The Tribe, has no spoken dialogue. It’s set at a boarding school for deaf students. There are no subtitles for the sign language either. But Slaboshpytskiy eases us into this world with the film’s first two shots. The first is a static view of a bus stop, positioned from across the street at eye level. As cars pass by in both directions, it’s evident that The Tribe is something other than a silent film. Sound will play an important part in the narrative. At first, we don’t know where to direct our attention. We see a woman with a toddler on the left, a second woman standing alone in the center, and a young man with a suitcase on the right. A stripped, abandoned car looms in the background covered in leaves. Then the young traveler approaches the woman in the middle to ask for directions. When a second bus arrives, everyone there is completely obscured, but when it departs, directions still are being discussed at the center of the frame. From this distant vantage point, we can see hand motions, but we wouldn’t be able to hear dialogue if it were being spoken.

The second shot—an even longer take—is handheld and trails the boy with the suitcase as he climbs a flight of stairs and approaches a school building. When he reaches a locked, windowed entrance to an assembly hall, a maintenance woman directs him to enter from the other side. But the camera doesn’t follow. It continues to peer through the window as a school ceremony unfolds in the courtyard on the opposite side of the building. A young girl is being carried on an older male’s shoulders, and we hear the faint sound of her ringing a bell. It grows louder as she leads a parade of students through the assembly hall. Some of the children present administrators with bouquets, and we see the first instances of sign language interaction. But again, Slaboshpytskiy has positioned the viewer at such a distance that we’re looking for gestures rather than listening for conversation. After everyone files out of the hall, the boy with the suitcase emerges alone to take a look around. By this point, we’ve become accustomed to watching without words, and we now know that this is our protagonist and we will follow him on his voyage.

His name is Sergey, played by Grigory Fesenko, but character names are only known by reading the credits. As the newest member of the school, he is soon approached by its ring of thugs and run through a violent initiation that ultimately pulls him into the gang’s nefarious, remorseless activities, which include stealing, bribing and the pimping of fellow female students. In the process, Slaboshpytskiy paints a grim portrait of the Ukraine’s underbelly. Matters become complicated when Sergey earns enough money to buy sex from his classmate, Anya (Yana Novikova). His subsequent feelings of attachment to her place him in compromising positions and lead to dangerous choices.

Winner of both the International Critics’ Week Grand Prize and Visionary Award at Cannes in 2014, The Tribe is bleak and unflinching enough to recall the recent work of Romanian director Cristian Mungui. Like Mungui’s films, it is composed of long takes and features no score. However, The Tribe has a unique energy that’s sparked by the expressive, physical performances of its cast, composed almost completely of deaf first-time actors. Lead actors Fesenko and especially Novikova take brave risks with the film’s graphic sexual content. The Tribe also draws tension and electricity from old Hollywood traits, be it the doomed predicaments of gangster and film noir anti-heroes or the roving camera motions of musicals. More than once, the film’s thugs march together at a pace and rhythm that lend it musicality.

The DVD/Blu-ray includes some vital special features, chiefly Slaboshpytskiy’s 10-minute short film, Deafness, which he describes as a pilot for the feature film. The short introduced him to members of the deaf community that would be instrumental in helping him make The Tribe. The audio commentary for The Tribe is essentially an interview/conversation between Slaboshpytskiy and film critic Devin Faraci. Unfortunately, it wasn’t recorded that well, and Faraci frequently breaks into laughter that’s jarring, especially given the grave tone of the film, but there are plenty of informative nuggets, including secrets behind some of Slaboshpytskiy’s camera tricks and details of how physically grueling the shoot was for the actors. There is also a candid 21-minute interview with Novikova, where she discusses, among other things, how she fasted during the shoot, how Slaboshpytskiy directed without signing, and that she hasn’t kept in touch with her castmates. The printed booklet includes a statement from Slaboshpytskiy, a brief interview with him, and an excerpt from his script, along with still photos from the film.

drafthousefilms.com/film/the-tribe

The Tribe from Drafthouse Films on Vimeo.

Author rating: 8/10