The Tribe - pro & con (with Mark Wilshin)

(Originally appeared in EXBERLINER on Oct. 15, 2015)

Pro: Silence is golden

Performed entirely in sign language without complementary subtitles, The Tribe is one of the most daring cinematic experiments in recent memory and it pays off big time. Austere, enigmatic, simmering with a quiet menace, it’s two-plus hours spent in a pressure cooker with an inevitably explosive ending.

Beyond the setting of an educational institute for the deaf and mute, and the fact that there’s some serious bullying going on around campus, we don’t understand much of what’s happening. From the moment our unnamed hero arrives at the silent compound, however, you find yourself in the grip of a terribly clever filmmaker who composes such expressive, eloquent images they give you enough clues to piece together your own narrative. The various non-verbal forms of communication, meanwhile, demonstrate vividly just how much we all have in common, down to the most despicable of motivations and the most barbaric of intents.

Airlessly intense with a constant promise of bad things to come, this dramatic thriller offers a singular movie-going experience that mystifies as much as it mesmerises and shocks. However ugly things get, you can’t take your eyes off the screen.

Con: Deaf and dumb (by Mark Wilshin)

A controversial festival hit, Slaboshpitsky’s The Tribe is the rather bleak tale of an unnamed deaf teenager (Fesenko) who, after making his way through the post-apocalyptic streets of Kiev, starts at a new boarding school. Overrun by gangs, it’s a violent, criminal demimonde of thieves, pimps and prostitutes. And for Ukraine, The Tribe is a piercing cry against the country’s dystopia of crime and emigration, an outraged scream against its lack of leadership and control.

But it’s a shout that’s been silenced. Filmed entirely in sign language, Slaboshpitsky refuses to subtitle his deaf characters – a conceit that keeps his tribe at arm’s length. And while we might overlook this disdain for his viewers’ understanding, the absence of subtitles turns his deaf characters into gesturing clowns – occasionally laughable, largely unintelligible and deprived of agency. Instead of subjects, the tribe members become objects to be gawked at, and Slaboshpitsky’s narrative suffers, incomprehensible in its detail, delivering instead a tale sketched in broad strokes with neither subtlety nor finesse. Reduced frustratingly to one single idea, The Tribe is a distasteful half-story content with playing dumb.

Interview: László Nemes (Son of Saul)

(Originally appeared in The Film Stage on Oct. 8 , 2015)

Is it true that the film was turned down by the Berlinale?

That is true. They didn’t want us in competition at least. I had thought, for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it would be a good film for Berlin, but…

On the other hand, the movie didn’t only make Cannes competition, which is rare enough for a debut feature, it went on to win the Grand Prix as well. Can you talk about the whole Cannes experience?

Well we knew pretty early on that we’d be in Cannes but we didn’t know in which section – we thought, maybe Un certain regard. And then came the news right before the official announcement that we’d be in competition, which was really quite a shock. To be honest it was scary, too. But we knew of course that this would give our film the kind of exposure it wouldn’t get otherwise. I also think the slot the festival chose to put us in – early on in the fest, low-profile – was suitable for the film.

Before going there, I had thought it’s going to be just superficial excitement, but when we actually presented the film, it was an almost spiritual experience. You feel a connection to the film, to the festival, to the audience. When I was walking into the theater, it felt like everything was in slow motion. And it was the first time that the cast and crew reunited after the shoot wrapped almost a year ago, so it was very special.

Most debut films would be impressive if they show ambition or have a brilliant idea. Yours is – on top of that – also technically accomplished. Where did you learn to do that?

I was an assistant director for years. I was an assistant to Béla Tarr in Hungary for two years, which taught me the basics of not just filmmaking, but high-level filmmaking – in terms of how to choreograph a scene, how to stage complicated shots, how to work with a professional crew etc. Also I had made three short films before this. And I had built a relationship to some key creative crew members over the years: the DP, the production designer, the sound designer. On such a foundation I can communicate with them effectively. It’s like we’ve been doing rehearsals all this time.

Talk about the technical achievement of the film, can you share how the astonishing cinematography came to be?

My cinematographer (Mátyás Erdély) is my age but he’s much more experienced – he’s shot like 15 features films. I think to shoot this film did require that kind of experience too, because this is a film where the cinematographer must be not just very good, but also someone who could resist the temptation to shoot a beautiful movie. The images needed to have a raw quality, not a pretty one. So I think it was important that he has had all that experience, for he’s past the stage of his career where he was just concentrating on pretty lighting, framing, and compositions. He understood the fact that visually, we needed something low-key, simple and raw. With that understanding we were able to speak the same language throughout the shoot. Before this we had made three short films together and he’s a cinematographer who’s involved even on the screenplay level. He asked me all the time about the story. For him it’s always story first. In fact we established a set of codes for this movie which we actually wrote down. Rules like: this is not a beautiful film. No beautiful shots. There would be no aestheticizing the suffering of the people. Or that the camera should be trained at eye level, making it a very subjective experience. Also, to use more or less only one 40mm lens because we wanted something that’s close to the human perception. And we didn’t want anything iconographic that would distract people’s attention. The movie should look a little messy, with an uncertain, unfinished quality.

And why this aspect ratio?

We were deciding between widescreen and the narrow academy aspect ratio. In the end we found that widescreen – although it would have looked very nice – would have been too… cinematic, it would have made a spectacle out of the background, made the background so stylistically important that we would lose the portrait-like focus we wanted for the film.

So you wanted the film to feel like a portrait.

Yes, we wanted it to be like a portrait because it’s about one man’s experience in hell. We’re all companion to the main character, he guides us through hell.

Can you talk about making the main character as non-verbal as he is?

These men are dead. This is something very central to how we approached the characters. These are special people. They’re so beyond traumatized they don’t function as normal human beings anymore. So our main character, like the others, is sort of a robot. He’s like someone who’s already dead but comes back alive or suddenly finds some life inside. So it had to be approached in a very low-key manner. The way these people are confronted with sufferings and the constant presence of death, why would they even be talking? As closed up as they must have been, it couldn’t have been natural for them to communicate their inner feelings. So that is a basic trait of our main character.

In fact we can’t even be sure if it’s really his son at all, can we?

Yeah it’s something that keeps coming back. And I think it’s essential to the story to try to discover who, what this boy is, and also to contemplate the implications of both possibilities. The viewer must consider both scenarios. In the end, I think the question we can ask ourselves is: does it matter if it’s his son or not?

The implications might be even more powerful if it’s not.

Yes, absolutely. A lot of people in the crew – I’m not going to say who here – think the boy is not his son.

Have you noticed different reactions from different audiences with this film?

I haven’t travelled enough to assess that. But overall I feel a strong engagement on the part of the audience every time, whether in Europe or North America.

What do you think is the relevance of a Holocaust film like this today?

I think people never had a direct, visceral understanding of what it might have been like to be inside a concentration camp, to be caught in the middle of an extermination machine. There have been attempts to approach it in a more intellectual manner, but not viscerally – to put you in the shoes of someone in that situation. It’s something that cinema can achieve, this kind of direct, intuitive relationship between the individual audience members and the character. We lack empathy in the sense that there’s a distance when we think about the camps in abstract terms. So I hope this movie can help make people really feel what it’s like to be oppressed and destroyed in our human experience. Also, if we consider Holocaust as a myth and not as something that took place in this world – I mean, Auschwitz was a factory, built by people and not by martians – if, as a civilization, we don’t address the genocidal tendency in our nature, how can we prevent such atrocities from happening again? So – maybe I’m being optimistic here – I think that’s something that cinema can do, to speak to the human in the audience. From there we can draw our own conclusions and the message becomes universal.

So it’s not just anti-Semitism that you’re trying to address with the film.

Absolutely. Of course, Jewish people have been subject to so much hatred for a long time so it’s specific in this sense obviously.

Filmfest Hamburg: Плем'я (The Tribe)

(Originally appeared in Film International on Oct. 13, 2014)

The Ukranian dramatic thriller "Плем'я (The Tribe)" marks the arrival of a major directorial talent in Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, who delivers a feature debut here that’s artistically challenging, topically provocative, stylistically assured, and an all-around daring, alluring, searing work of vision. Set in an educational institution for the deaf and mute, the entire movie is acted out in sign language without any translation, subtitles or voice-over. From the very start, the viewer is thrown head-first into a world devoid of speech and made to stay there for a 132 minute runtime that often feels like such a compressed vacuum that it literally takes your breath away. If the very first scenes, as curiously indistinct as they are observed from across the street or the edge of a ritualistic assembly, don’t yet make the one-of-a-kind quality of this film known, you soon find yourself in (apparently) the principal’s office with the new, introverted student Sergey (Grigory Fesenko), followed by an exchange completely impenetrable to anyone unversed in the art of signing.

There will be many more situations like this, in which one has no way of knowing what’s being said, ordered, questioned, debated, but the brilliance of the director lies exactly in the fact that he understands human communication, even when stripped of all conversational tools, can sneak through the most imperceptible channels and light a spark of recognition on the most subliminal level. Indeed, one quickly realizes no words are needed to convey such primal fears of exclusion, exploitation or abuse. And in the practiced efficiency with which tasks are carried out and hierarchy established on the school compound, one can readily spot a sinister enterprise long before the actual criminal acts begin. Of course, this implies a much more instinctual and less precise form of comprehension, which ultimately counts against the relatability of the script, but the emotional ripples it stirs up are just as real. An argument between two girls via a lot of furious gesticulating later in the film, for example, baffles in terms of its exact meaning but remains utterly compelling to watch for the sheer passion it captures.

Further enhancing the unique experience of following a story without always being informed of what’s happening are the strong visual and aural imprint of Slaboshpitsky’s hand. Scenes set in a crowded student cafeteria are silent except for the busy clutter of cutlery, as well as scenes depicting a group visit to an amusement park at night with only the creaking of the merry-go-around audible, are intensely sound-focused and disturb with an inherent strangeness. An extended sequence of a complete gynecological procedure shows all the motions gone through with rapt attention and inflicts an almost physical pain through those unblinking eyes. Combining both elements, a carefully choreographed public fight/mob scene staged against waves of eerily muted cheers engenders such peculiar artificiality and ceremoniousness that one suspects it would make Lars von Trier proud. These directorial tricks wouldn’t work without the support of an able technical team, and, especially in the case of the visual department, first-time cinematographer Valentyn Vasyanovych impresses with a tremendous sense of space. There is nothing amateurish or accidental about his camera, which expands and constricts its view with purpose and design, filling the images with geometrical cues and a tangible aliveness too glorious to go unnoticed.

As hinted above, the writing on the film (also by Slaboshpitsky) isn’t as watertight as the directing. On the one hand there’s the built-in problem of limited articulation, which prevents us from being totally sure of some finer points of the plot and thus identifying with the characters with more conviction. On the other, the plotting itself is a little repetitive at times, especially with the prostitution scheme enacted time and again. And if it’s not supposed to be an attack on the social reality in the Ukraine, the general lack of supervision within this facility also feels unaccounted for. Another smaller weakness is the performance by Fesenko in the lead role, which might be too unvaried to bring the viewer closer. These faults in screenwriting and acting contribute to an extremely violent ending that seems to be carried by too little context except simple-minded rage. Even so, the journey leading up to that blood-splattered point is an absolutely transfixing one and it gratifies to no end seeing such fearless creative risk-taking pay off with flying colors while witnessing an impossible idea realized with big, confident gestures.

Filmfest Hamburg: Fehér isten (White God)

(Originally appeared in the Berlin Film Journal on Oct. 10, 2014)

A striking first frame or opening sequence, while not the solution to every problem, is definitely a big plus for any movie. After all, it's the image that most immediately leaves an impression, sets the tone, puts your imagination to work. And a hugely promising start the Hungarian dramatic thriller "Fehér isten (White God)" does have. Unfortunately it turns out to be one of those downhill slides that never manage to regain the initial height again.

Blunt, structurally complicated and contextually unusual, a static overhead shot of crisscrossing streets and highway on a crisp morning in Budapest- completely empty of traffic- drops like a brick with an almost illusionary optical starkness. The sense of unease only escalates as a lone bike-rider then pedals across the abandoned city, chased by probably the only thing even more worrisome than a pack of blood-thirsty zombies- a pack of angry-looking dogs. It's an arresting overture impressive for its classical composition and tonal urgency. When it's followed after the title card directly by a sequence of the young biker girl playing with her mutt in careless frolic from another time, the contrast is strong, the curiosity and expectation stoked great.

For a while, it seems that the high hopes would be proven valid, too. The movie remains forcefully present, making especially good use of intensely corporal, symbol-heavy imagery like the carcasses and innards of skinned livestock in a slaughterhouse that are promptly, somewhat vulgarly stamped "suitable for consumption". The smart iconography continues with the main character design: girl in hoodie, with bike in hands and trumpet in rucksack, roaming the neighborhood side by side with her loyal sidekick. It's an instantly catchy, almost fable-like figure that easily consolidates a surreal tale around itself. So far, so good.          

But then writer/director Kornél Mundruczó appears to run out of fresh ideas. The critical second act that should establish the story of how the frightening canine army came to be, begins with a hasty, simplistically constructed desertion that feels sorely inadequate. The subsequent parallel narrative is uneven at best, with the storyline following Hagen the dog consistently more interesting than the one about his anxious owner. The many angles that part of the story tackles, including the father-daughter relationship and a half-hearted attempt at adolescent romance, are generically conceived, failing to quicken the dramatic pulse which drops whenever the focus moves away from the dog. But even on the more adventurous front, the journey of a house pet to becoming a ruthless prizefighter is not particularly winning. The handful of escape sequences lack an adult edginess and come across as too harmless and Disney, an effect further strengthened by the fairly literal use of "villainous" or "adrenalin" music throughout.

The third act, which ideally would bring the story full circle and realize that scary promise from the beginning, also falls way short. While the massive stampede scenes are still unquestionably awesome, without sufficient secondary references to back it up, the horror element employed here significantly misses the mark, so that everything from the theatrical woman-dog stare-down at the shelter gate to the subsequent elimination of the butcher, the animal trader, even the dog-hating neighbor, gets rather unintentionally comical.

The most glowing asset of the film is doubtlessly its award-winning (Palme Dog 2014) canine cast, in particular the leader of the pack Hagen. Easily out-acting all all his human colleagues, he fascinates with exact and expressive movements, whether in petrification, alertness, rage or bewilderment. Through the variety of his reactions he also manages to save the unimaginatively choreographed and shot dog fight scenes from truly tanking. Ultimately the spectacles and some soulful animal performances aren't enough to salvage a film struggling with finding its own personality though. The vicious brutality depicted here and there can hardly be reconciled with the kiddie-friendly plot paternalistically rendered. And when the final weapon against the bestial invasion, which everyone in the audience has long guessed, is drawn and resolves the crisis as expected, the deliciously macabre undertone from that great opening quote "Everything terrible is something that needs our love" is irreversibly flipped. What you see then among the fluffy chaos on screen is, above all else, a wasted opportunity.

Ida

Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski's "Ida", about a young Jewish nun going on a trip with her free-spirited aunt to find the grave of their murdered family, is a small but fine character study/ mood piece that sadly doesn't amount to more. Starting off rather like a straight, mildly amusing odd-couple road movie, it soon reveals itself to be not quite the harmless vanilla as subjects of holocaust, religion, identity, choice and temptation emerge. However, partly due to its light 80-min length and more because of the directorial decision to keep a cool distance from the volatility of the situations, the film dealing with all these life and death issues often feels oversimplified, strangely insubstantial. So in the third act, when shock waves are sent by unexpected turns of events, the emotional blow they pack is not much beyond that of a genuine sigh.

Still, in presenting two vastly different female characters each vivid and mysterious in her own way, the film provides plenty of quietly poignant moments where one gets to witness facets of humanity, unadorned and fascinating. And aesthetically, the film is an absolute winner. Exquisite, sometimes unconventional compositions and textured, era-specific production design synchronize with the patiently observant lens in perfect harmony to yield images that are striking in their beauty and evocative in their tone. Black-and-white photography is not automatically interesting (take that, "Nebraska"!), but with the right visual concept in place and all the supporting elements aligned, it can make snow, smoke, a stain, a shoe look so glorious and forlorn it's a precious, precious thing.

A nagy füzet

It's probably a culture thing, but the Hungarian WWII drama "A nagy füzet (The Notebook)", despite featuring the young, the elderly and the persecuted in numerous physically and emotionally extreme situations, feels strangely unrelatable and cold to the touch most of the time. The motives and change of minds of its characters are never directly dealt with but just put out there in a puzzling collage of whims, while plot-wise the movie can't seem to make up its mind on what it's about either. Just when you think it's an indictment of the (inexplicably) abusive child-rearing method of the grandmother and the toll it takes on the poor grandsons, the focus changes to the twin boys' incorrigible dependence on each other, their (inexplicably) random acts of cruelty, or their observations of the mad war. The ambivalent musical cues with recurring drum rolls also doesn't help.

Towards the end of the film, director János Szász did manage to tighten up the narrative and pin down the tone somewhat, signing off with a cryptic, slightly unsettling scent in the air that's unusual/refreshing for the genre. Lensed by Christian Berger, the movie often looks very pretty, with sun-bleached stone walls and fire-lit vapors making up some of its careful compositions. The art direction is also strong, evidenced above all by the meticulous recreation of the title-giving notebook, which tells a story all its own through the pedantic attention to details and that crazed, childish flourish.

Berlinale: Gloria / Pozitia Copilului (Child's Pose)

Two competition titles featuring central female characters showcase superb performances by veteran actresses.

Chilean director Sebastián Lelio's "Gloria" starts off a bit shakily, meanders here and there, but gradully grows into a fascinating character study of a woman fighting for happiness late in her life. As the chain-smoking, booze-downing, trigger-happy sexy grandma rocking a pair of retro-glasses, Paulina Garcia is absolutely glorious. In the bitterly funny last act when she finally sees, decides to drop the specs and sway blindly on the dancefloor, it's hard not to cheer.

Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer's "Pozitia Copilului (Child's Pose)" starts out strongly with a bad-ass opening scene and promises of severe social critique plus nasty parenting tips, but dissolves slowly into mushy repentance drama, losing all that sharp angle and wicked tone. As the vehement, scheming mom with a penchant for suffocating his grown-up son with incestuous affection, though, Luminita Gheorghiu is equal parts intimidating, pitiful, loving and perverse, not an easy feat to pull off.

Berlinale: W imię...(In the Name of) / 明天記得愛上我 (Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?)

Polish competition title "W imię...(In the Name of)" by director Małgośka Szumowska is skillfully shot, tracing swift movements and capturing fleeting sensations with fluidity and aesthetic assurance. Sadly the taboo-drama is direly underwritten, failing to establish palpable struggle of or emotional association with the characters. The editing is especially patchy, chopping off many scenes before any dramatic potential could be realized.

Taiwanese director Arvin Chen's "明天記得愛上我 (Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?)" is a sweet pop-tart of a movie with a happy ending you can spot from miles away. All predictability aside, the script offers high entertainment value while poking at issues of sexuality, marriage, commitment; together with the vibrant colors, a swirling jazzy soundtrack and elements of magical realism lending modern-day Taipei an endearing whim, it led to a romantic comedy that's perhaps too easily digestible, but nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable.