By the end of Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt, the initial plot set-up that began the film has been largely forgotten -lost in a tense haze of the drug-induced, possibly apocalyptic miasma its characters find themselves in. Harrowing stuff happens and priorities shift, the outside world -its mysteries elusive in the isolated heat of the Sahara- changes dramatically. And what began the journey of a concerned father becomes a radical test of survival and endurance. Though for what purpose remains somewhat unclear.
It reminds me a little bit of a Wim Wenders road movie, though not so much Paris, Texas -which it shares certain aesthetics with- as Until the End of the World, a more obscure, challenging, and lengthy film that also resembles by the end very little what it started as. Sirāt though is less meditative than anything by Wenders, in fact it is rather pulse-pounding even through stretches devoid of action. The characters may even be enjoying themselves and yet there is something unnerving in the air. The other shoe is constantly ready to drop, but how and for what is something entirely vague. A bizarre experience as much as an effective one.
Laxe has a preference for non-professional actors, as all but the lead of this movie are. Yet Sergi López fits in among them well as the distressed Spanish father Luis scouring a rave festival in southern Morocco for his missing daughter. He and his son Esteban (Bruno Nuñez Arjona) wander around the vicinity showing her photo to various participants to no avail. But one group suggests she might be at another rave some distance deeper into the desert near the border with Mauritania. The rave is shut down by the military and due to some nebulous armed conflict heating up, the Europeans are ordered to be evacuated. In spite of this Luis and Esteban join with the small crew and their dog in a bus to travel to this other rave for the chance of finding their missing person. And while things go nicely for a time, eventually the party encounters some chaos.
The vehicles, a small school bus and a van, are vividly out of place against the wide open, barren desert, the breadth of hostile nature overpowering and isolating this small group of people on a very bizarre little quest -Luis is there because he is desperate, the raver collective he has joined probably just looking for another place to party. Despite this mix of motivations, the group get along fairly well for a while, Laxe steering around obvious conflict or tension as he characterizes these latter-day hippies with a tangible, occasionally amusing naturalism. Like how Tonin (Tonin Janvier), a man who is missing much of his right leg entertains the rest with a musical puppet show using his stump during a reprieve in their travel.
In spite of moments like these though, the cast don't really get to know each other -even details about Luis, his relationship with Esteban, and what exactly happened with his daughter that saw her go missing out in the desert remains a mystery all through the movie. There is something vaguely mythic I think in Laxe's intention in this -a lack of context is indeed part of the desired effect. The story is an odyssey, the world it is happening against big and foreboding, without even factoring in the potentially gravitational situation happening regionally on its outskirts. You are meant to feel a bit lost by it, certainly by the end.
But Laxe isn't a stylist, much as his movie looks very good, the starkness of the desert overpowering these vehicles, tiny specks of human interference against a vast and hostile nature. Apart from this however, the film's attempt at generating an evocative dreamlike atmosphere doesn't much manifest. When the characters chill out or do drugs we experience their trips from an objective standpoint, even in the case of Luis. There is something mildly novel in that, but it is not especially interesting.
To a degree one hopes that Laxe's non-professional cast were not themselves ravers he happened to recruit (though each of their characters is named after them), because what is clear is that Laxe -though he has some authentic curiosity with the subculture broadly- doesn't particularly like or respect them. They are the chief targets of his satirical pen here, depicted as a close but misfit commune seeking merely their next bacchanal while the world possibly burns around them. There is very much a tenor to some of them reminiscent of hippie stereotypes in the 1960s and 70s -like the cast of Hair transplanted in the Moroccan desert. I don’t know if Laxe intends for them to be a kind of stand-in for some likely left-wing collective or movement, or if they are just a kind of hedonism incarnate, but that cynical attitude certainly manifests in how they respond to their environment. Against them, Luis is a more rational observer, but at apparent risk of being absorbed by them as well. He is the most vulnerable, undergoes a devastating trauma, and eventually is made a curious messianic figure at the group’s lowest point. There is intent behind this, but it isn’t universally coherent, especially given how little Luis is developed outside of his fish-out-of-water experience with these people in the desert.
On a whole the movie doesn’t make a lot of sense. And yet there is something deeply entrancing to it. Sirāt goes far on the power of implication; a guttural sense of unease at what is actually going on and what it means -to which the characters are unaware. It is a movie that captures the isolating environment so perfectly. It’s haunting out in the desert, no road, no sign of either civilization or wildlife -the Mad Max comparisons are not inaccurate, though interestingly this is the movie that contains the greater quantity of dread. It can be a disquieting experience at times, Laxe executes his tension very capably. Without any kind of pomp, it paints a chilling picture of the end of the world, whether it is literally so or not.
And for that Sirāt really stands on its own. It doesn’t totally come together as it intends to where its apparent thematic and political commentary is considered, but its weighty atmosphere makes up a lot for that. I see why it won the Jury Prize at Cannes this year, as I expect the experience of it in a theatre is not one that will quickly leave you. But it is not so shocking or radical on its own, much as it has a handful of well-executed moments to those effects. It is like the desert, expansive and intimidating, but not full of very much.
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