Sirât – first-look review

Eupho­ria and dev­as­ta­tion are the twin emo­tion­al poles that prop up the lop­sided big top that is Oliv­er Laxe’ Sirât, a film about life, death, and music that’s not made for your ears but for your heart. The film opens with the build­ing of a minia­ture ancient civil­i­sa­tion, the bricks and mor­tar being used are giant speak­ers that are being piled into sky­scraper-like mono­liths in the Moroc­can desert. 

A com­mu­ni­ty of tat­tooed rev­ellers who look like they have been sprung from a Mad Max movie have come to wor­ship at the altar of rave, and the film sets its audio­vi­su­al tem­plate by hav­ing them com­mune with bass-heavy elec­tron­ic music played at ear-split­ting volumes.

Enter ambling, wor­ried father Luis (Ser­gi López) and his pre-teen son Este­ban (Bruno Núñez), hand­ing out fly­ers for their miss­ing daughter/​sister, who left six months ago and was said to be at a desert rave like this one. They try not to harsh the oth­er ravers’ mel­low, but are ulti­mate­ly futile in their search. But they do meet Stephy (Ste­fa­nia Gad­da), Josh (Joshua Liam Herder­son), Tonin (Tonin Jan­vi­er), Jade (Jade Oukid) and Bigui (Richard Bel­lamy), who men­tion they’re going to be dri­ving down to anoth­er rave in Mau­ri­ta­nia, and so they fol­low the gang on their long road trip in a dinky peo­ple carrier. 

Laxe is a film­mak­er whose ear­ly work, such as We Are Not Cap­tains and Mimosas, inhab­it­ed a more play­ful metacin­e­mat­ic ter­ri­to­ry, while his most recent Fire Will Come from 2019 saw him erring a lit­tle more towards con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive and direct­ly artic­u­lat­ed themes. Sirât is his most expan­sive, unique and trou­bling (in a good way!) film, ini­tial­ly propos­ing some­thing that would seem cosi­ly approach­able – a study of a makeshift fam­i­ly formed around the search for a miss­ing woman – but piv­ots very sud­den­ly into the realms of sym­bol­ic fable, where the base ele­ments that have been served to us are sud­den­ly made to look and sound com­plete­ly different.

Bub­bling in the back­ground of the film is the sug­ges­tion of an apoc­a­lyp­tic soci­etal melt­down, as the first rave we join is even­tu­al­ly raid­ed by the mil­i­tary and every­one is told to dis­band and return to their homes. Our ad-hoc con­voy nev­er receive any direct threats from this omi­nous mil­i­tary pres­ence while on their jour­ney, but the rugged, for­bid­ding land­scape they trav­el across has been beat­en in and manip­u­lat­ed by years of strug­gle and con­flict. They dri­ve over ghosts, his­to­ry, the mem­o­ries of failed attempts to built the type of com­mu­ni­ty which they take for granted.

The gang are very easy­go­ing and chill, and Luis and Este­ban can’t help but form a deep­er bond than one where they’re mere nav­i­ga­tors. The pair are even a lit­tle amused when their gor­geous lit­tle dog Più Più is found con­vuls­ing hav­ing con­sumed a dose of LSD through one of the raver’s night­time shits. Laxe turns cer­tain char­ac­ter stereo­types inside out with these juiced-up ravers being con­sid­er­ate, philo­soph­i­cal, empa­thet­ic, humor­ous and com­plete­ly in tune with other’s needs. It’s a vision of a roughshod utopia, self-built and nes­tled on the out­er fringes of a civil­i­sa­tion that is crum­bling in on itself.

Yet just like puls­ing, repet­i­tive EDM music, the tone, the key, the melody and the BPMs sud­den­ly piv­ot to invite a dif­fer­ent type of dance and a new set of move­ments. Par­adise found is now par­adise lost, as the treach­er­ous route sud­den­ly gets the upper hand and this frag­ile unit begins to dis­in­te­grate. If you’re read­ing any­thing about this film and it starts to go into too much detail about its extra­or­di­nary sec­ond half, then you should stop read­ing instant­ly, as part of the mag­ic of this thrill is the expert way in which evolves into some­thing that is both over­whelm­ing­ly (even com­i­cal­ly) dark, but also offers the same rhap­sod­ic bod­i­ly dis­con­nect that the char­ac­ters them­selves are search­ing for.

Sirât is a tru­ly stag­ger­ing and major film, one that has to be seen to be believed – a mas­ter­ful gam­bit of affec­tion­ate char­ac­ter and com­mu­ni­ty build­ing that mutates into a work that deals with the pri­mal instincts of human sur­vival and the idea that we cre­ate our own gods through the things that we chose to worship.

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