You'll not see anything like it this year.
The Tribe
Grade: A-
Director: Miroslav Slaboshpitsky
Screenplay: Slaboshpitsky
Cast: Grigorly Fesenko, Yana Novikova
Rating: NR
Runtime: 132 min.
by John DeSando
As a word lover, I was apprehensive about a lengthy speechless Ukrainian drama about deaf mute students. But not to worry, I was hearing everything from inside me with the minimal ambient sound almost distracting. And no manipulative music. Fascinating to watch our hero, Grigioriy (Grigoriy Fesenko), become a member of the school’s gang of petty thieves and prostitutes until his arc is devastatingly developed by the film’s end.
The static camera, allowing characters to come in and out of frame without disruption, is a relief from so much of today’s hand-held and contortion-prone gyrations. The graphic, realistic scenes, sexual and violent alike, have an awkward freshness perhaps because of the silence and also because of the accomplished direction of Miroslav Slaboshpitsky. The teens are at once daring in their thievery and sex (especially when not prostituting) while at the same time naïve and unsure.
So bleak is the Ukraine that the youngsters’ wish to migrate to Italy is palpable. So desolate is their dormitory with its cell-like rooms that the violence seems a natural companion. The honesty of The Tribe (and they are very much tribal, primitive, and unbridled) is not for everyone. For me, it was like watching a new form of cinema not quite verite but maybe more truthful than any other realistic drama today.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
