Euphoria and devastation are the two emotional pillars that prop up the despicable Oliver Laxe’ Sirât, a film about life, death, and music not for your ears but for your heart. The film opens with the construction of a small ancient civilization, bricks and mortar used in large speakers that are piled into skyscraper-like monoliths in the Moroccan desert. A community of tattooed revelers who seem straight out of a Mad Max movie come to worship at the altar of rave, and the film sets its own audio-visual template by having them chatter away with heavy electronic music played at ear-splitting volumes.
In comes a worried father, Luis (Sergi López) and his teenage son Esteban (Bruno Núñez), handing out flyers for his missing daughter/sister, who left six months ago and was said to be on a desert run like this one. They try not to hurt the other ravers, but they end up in vain in their search. But they meet Stephy (Stefania Gadda), Josh (Joshua Liam Herderson), Tonin (Tonin Janvier), Jade (Jade Oukid) and Bigui (Richard Bellamy), who say they’re going to another rave in Mauritania, so they follow the gang on their long journey riding the little people.
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Laxe is a filmmaker whose first work, as We are not Captains again Mimosaswhich resides in the most played metacinematic space, while the most recent Fire will come from 2019 he saw him blundering a little on the usual topics discussed and directly stated. The Sirât his film is very expansive, unique and troubling (in a good way!), initially proposing something that would seem accessible – the study of a temporary family made about the search for a missing woman – but it pivots suddenly into the realms of symbolic mythology, where the basic elements that have been given to us are suddenly made to look and sound completely different.
Bubbling in the background of the film is a suggestion of an apocalyptic social breakdown, as the first rave we join is eventually attacked by the military and everyone is told to disperse and return to their homes. Our ad-hoc team never encounters any direct threats from this terrifying military presence while on their journey, but the rugged, forbidding terrain they traverse has been battered and worn by years of struggle and conflict. They drive over ghosts, history, memories of failed attempts to build the kind of society they take for granted.
The gang is relaxed and cool, and Luis and Esteban can’t help but form a bond deeper than when they were just sailors. The pair were even more surprised when their adorable dog Più Più was found convulsing after consuming a dose of LSD by using one of the raver night songs. Laxe turns the stereotyping of certain characters inside out with these juicy ravers who are thoughtful, philosophical, empathetic, humorous and completely attuned to the needs of others. It is a vision of a negative environment, built for and placed on the outer fringes of a civilization that is itself collapsing.
However, like a strong, repetitive pulse EDM music, tone, key, music and BPMs suddenly swirl to invite a different kind of dance and a new set of moves. Paradise found is now paradise lost, as the treacherous route suddenly gains ground and this weak unit begins to disintegrate. If you read anything about this film and it starts to go into a lot of details about its extraordinary second half, you should stop reading immediately, as part of the magic of this fascination is the professional way that evolves into something that is both very dark (even funny), but also gives the same rhapsodic body to cut that the characters themselves are looking for.
The Sirât it’s a truly amazing and epic film, which has to be seen to be believed – a brilliant play of a loving character and the creation of a society that evolves into a work about the inherent nature of human existence and the idea that we create our gods out of the things we choose to worship.
