The Tribe

A young boy is sent to boarding school run for the deaf. Children of various ages and backgrounds are mixed together and educated. The school has a complex and deeply held system of power. The hierarchy has some at the top of the table and dealing drugs. Others are pimps and prostitutes. The power moves to those who can keep an order or those who have something that others want. The only constant is that they all have the school as their home and the centre of their universe.

Cinema has that effect on me sometimes. The effect I am talking about of course is highlighted in a statement by the late, great Italian American film maker Frank Capra. Film, like music and maths is a universal language. A langauge we all can understand, simply by watching it unfold infromt of us. The universal language of communicating. It teachs you about a world and a realm that you could never have known. A realm of experience that can only but be touched by those within its very grasp. This film is that. A film that allows you an exploration of the world of those who are deaf. We live in their world, experience their lives and are even introduced to an order within this. A civilization within a civilization, so to speak. Winners of numerous awards and a bold and frank piece of cinema from the Ukraine, this is the silent and stirring The Tribe...

This silent world is at times surreal, abstract and incredible. Think of this as like the Larry Clark film Kids, it is as sexual and as violent. The characters are often unlikeable and ordinary. This film has people that are everyday and live everyday lives. they have sex, punch, kick and drink. All to escape a world and a life less ordinary to us. Not to them. Then again visually it is like a film by Theodoros Angelopoulos. His camera wandered and explored its space in a way that was intellegent. Revealing truths without agression. This happens here as the camera walks around and opens us up to the world of these children. It is framed almost totally in master shot. This is unfamiliar to many but I love the wide view of life and this is executed with stunning form. The other thing here is a stark film about coming of age. Much like a 1960s kitchen sink film, this wants to reveal details of kids. The lives of people that know no better and aspire for little. This might be a little hard, I mean that the order does not allow them aspiration. Told totally without sub titles or verbal comprehension. This is the most extra ordinary film of the year.

The DVD additions are unknow as the check disk was only the film.