It's safe to assume most people don't know about The Tribe. It's a Ukrainian movie about a school for the deaf. All the characters communicate in sign language. There are no subtitles for dialogue. The only subtitles say things like "leaves rustling" or "indistinctive chatter". The sound in the movie is sparingly and judiciously handed out. What this means is that you have to infer a lot of the story from actions, context, and body language. That part really interested me. I think the entire cast are amateurs or people with few credits, which is impressive, given the degree of difficulty of these performances. I love how it isn't a film about being deaf either. There's an actual story. The fact that the characters are deaf is a factor, but it isn't the focus. I like a good story about overcoming some hardship in life, but it's movies like this that I really find progressive.
I wasn't as ready as I thought for The Tribe. I was prepared for the storytelling vehicle. I wasn't prepared for the story. It's grim. Real grim. The teens in the movie do some awful things and, since there's no talking about it, you have to see it all. I praise the filmmaker for fleshing things out so completely, but it was rough to get through. I'll also admit, I had to check a synopsis of the movie a couple times to make sure I was understanding some scenes correctly.
I'm glad I watched this. It's good to vary up my movie diet some. If this was a movie with full dialogue though but otherwise the same, I wouldn't've liked it very much. Not my kind of movie. That ending...oh my. Brutal.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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