The Tribe (2014)

My sign language review for this movie is 👎👎👎👎👎👎. I can't hear the people speak but I can hear the doors closing, footsteps and paper shuffling? The Tribe? More like 'The Stupid'. Were these guys suppose to be mute as well? Deaf people do make sounds. I don't think they were even using real sign language throughout this flick. Deaf Gangs, Deaf Pimps & Deaf Prostitute Lot Lizards does not equal a good film. What about the irony of throwing up gang signs using sign language. The awkward Deaf Sex scenes were hilarious and it was the only time anyone made any sound. This movie was weird. I wonder what the director will make next, A DEAF MUSICAL? You can't hear the music but you can see it. When they performed the Deaf Abortion I was Dead. Everyone acting or working in this film obviously wrote the bogus positive reviews. My 1st review saying this movie sucked was reported for abuse and deleted. I DEAFinitely want my $$$ back.

At some point while watching The Tribe, I realised I was being asked to take a side. Is this a fantastically ambitious, technically precise, artful slice-of-life look at the brutality humanity is capable of? Or is it an exploitative, immature, cinephile indulgence that insults the deaf community with its condescension. The litmus test of a bad movie is when you start to admire the technique, because it means you are not caught up in the story. The Tribe, in fact, sets out to ensure you are not caught up in the story: one scene one take long shots that carry on interminably is a rigorous aesthetic that craves an art-house stamp of approval, but the audience is doubly distanced by the signing interactions. This does not give a universal humanity to the deaf, it simply denies them a voice. This happens quite literally - like the director, I work near a deaf school and share a commute with the pupils. They are loud as hell, like all energetic schoolkids are. I can't imagine deaf Ukranian schoolkids are any different. Much has been made of the precise staging and blocking. But while I could admire the precise timing in some of the mise-en-scene, there are also amateurish moments, such as the slapstick fighting that is supposed to be the protagonist's rite of passage into the gang. The second half of the film seems to give up on any semblance of reality in plotting completely. The protagonist is conveniently hanging about when his romance interest gets her new passport, and there is a conveniently filled sink of water waiting when the bad boys get hold of him. A teacher is assaulted, possibly murdered, with no apparent consequences. I can't tell if this is a comment on societal indifference to brutality, or lazy screen writing. The pleasure in viewing The Tribe emerges from the mechanics of filmmaking, asking "How did they do that?": the violence, the sex scenes, the abortion sequence. As narrative, as catharsis, the film never engages and its gimmicks become weary. A clever film in many ways, perhaps a cynical one, and nowhere near as good as it thinks it is.

Like Kubrick's said: "In a film, however, I think the images, the music, the editing and the emotions of the actors are the principal tools you have to work with. Language is important but I would put it after those elements. It should even be possible to do a film which isn't gimmicky without using any dialogue at all. Unfortunately, there has been very little experimentation with the form of film stories, except in avant-garde cinema where, unfortunately, there is too little technique and expertise present to show very much.As far as I'm concerned, the most memorable scenes in the best films are those which are built predominantly of images and music."

The Tribe is a remarkable movie set in a boarding school for deaf students, or more specifically its dark side. The world of bullying, violence, juvenile delinquency and prostitution. It is brutal, visceral and tragic. The dialogue is in Ukrainian sign language without any subtitles or spoken words. I expected watching such movie to be a torture. I was wrong. It is gripping, immersing, thought-provoking and quite watchable. But it does demand attentive, patient and interested viewer. When Norma Desmond, a character played by Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard said: "We didn't need any dialogue, we had faces", she was part right. We really do not need dialogue to grasp the story, but we don't need faces either. We never see any close ups in The Tribe. What we do see is a bigger picture. And that's what this movie is about.