The beauty of the film is the multi-layered themes are presented in an almost implicit time stands still way , as if the landscape and the shimmering milky way are telling the tale from the vantage of permanent virtues being temporally interrupted by the short time values of vice , something the land and the sky have seen come and go many times before.
This review from Variety gives a fair account of the plot and themes in the film.
"Like all well-done adventure tales, especially those with an intimate human focus and an expansive, epic vision, “Theeb” works on multiple levels. On the one hand, it’s the story of a young boy who witnesses his beloved brother’s death and has to survive the inhospitable desert while thinking of ways to restore his family’s honor — classic horse-opera material, complete with marauding bandits. By making his protag a young boy however, the director sidesteps the usual black-and-white, honor-and-revenge mainstays of the genre, which certainly exist here but are tempered by Theeb’s youth and uncertainty.
Then there’s the historical context, which Abu Nowar very much wants audiences to understand — intro titles are far too ubiquitous in contempo cinema, yet this is one case where a brief explanation of Ottoman-British enmity might come in handy, especially given the West’s distressing ignorance of the subject (“Lawrence of Arabia,” shot nearby, covers similar ground). “Theeb” is set at the moment when the Bedouin lifestyle was on the cusp of radical change, and pilgrim guides like Hussein were made redundant by trains going all the way to Mecca. Young Theeb is a witness to these shifts, his survival dependent on the training he receives watching his brother, but his future as a traditional nomad is coming to an end."
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