FFCC members review Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s ‘The Tribe’
FFCC members review Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s all-deaf cast drama from the Ukraine, The Tribe.
Juan Barquin, Dim the House Lights
“A friend once questioned, with regards to Gaspar Noé’s work, whether or not a film could actually be good when it was meant to be a purposely painful experience to sit through. I used to believe that yes, it could be, and I still do. But sitting through over two hours of The Tribe has made me realize that there’s nothing worse than being forced to experience something that only exists to get a rise out of its audience without even once contemplating why it was doing so in the first place.”
Hans Morgenstern, Independent Ethos
“As Slaboshpitsky allows the camera to roll on and on … and on and on, you may find yourself tuning out of the narrative to grumble that you get the point.”
Reuben Pereira, Film Frontier
“What’s the point of a brilliant conceit and bravura filmmaking technique if there isn’t an interesting narrative or fleshed-out characters to back it up?”
Ruben Rosario, Miami Art Zine
“The director’s decision to shoot the bulk of the film in long shots, with few, if any, cuts within scenes, places a burden on the otherwise well-cast actors, one they’re increasingly ill-equipped to handle. The characters are thus reduced to shrill players in a very creaky plot, but even on those cheap terms, there’s no weight to their drastic actions, and what’s supposed to come across as a hard-hitting denouement for the members of The Tribe‘s tribe musters little more than a weak ‘so what?'”
