‘Sirāt’ Review: Óliver Laxe’s Descent into Hell [TIFF 25]
Óliver Laxe crafts an unrelentingly cruel picture with the explosive Sirāt, questioning human morality at the center of his scorching, pulse-pounding thriller.
In the opening text of Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt, we learn that the word signifies a bridge between Heaven and Hell. Throughout the movie, it becomes clear that the characters are much closer to Hell than they are to their idea of paradise, even when things seem to be paradisiacal, as we follow a group of people dancing to electronic dance tunes in the south of Morocco. In the middle of this elaborately constructed rave, with pulse-pounding music that will more or less have your head bopping at every turn, there is Luis (Sergi López) and his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), who careen around the party searching for their daughter and sister, Mar.
Thinking they have a better chance of knowing her whereabouts, they join several people going to another rave, after the military shut down the one they organized. You see, as they’re partying, World War III is on the cusp of taking place, making this desolate journey into the Moroccan desert all the more horrifying. For the first half of Sirāt, Laxe stages a road trip movie, where tension mounts through its striking cinematography and pulse-pounding sound design, as opposed to spending time with the characters and seeing a relationship develop. This could prove alienating for some, because we barely have time to breathe, even with Luis and Esteban as our anchors.
They, like the audience, attempt to understand exactly what they’ve stepped into. Laxe never gives them a moment of respite, either. As soon as they join the partygoers, it all goes to Hell from there, and I’d even argue that their journey to find Mar is ill-fated from the start. She did not disappear, nor was she kidnapped. She simply does not want to be found. Luis’ quest seems futile even before we know more about her and the life she currently has. That’s why it doesn’t feel that frustrating when Laxe eventually switches gears and takes a hard right turn that brings his movie into a completely different direction than what was initially introduced.
And it doesn’t feel provocative for the sake of pushing buttons either, because for the entire first half of the picture, Laxe wants us to feel the environment the protagonists are stuck in, before making us witnesses to the horrors of the Hell he’s envisioned for them. The dissociation between the music and the film’s images is also interesting because Laxe will craft sequences of great intensity and emotional distress through the incredible EDM he fills each distressing image with. The music makes us want to dance and have a good time, even if what we’re looking at is totally not appropriate for anyone to want to make any sort of movement in front of the screen. It forces us to confront how we react to images in an era where we see far too many at the same time, and could make us rethink our relationships to our screens when the world Luis and Esteban explore has limited technological means (at least where they are).
This is, of course, not Laxe’s goal, but it’s hard not to think about this when seeing how the images do not respond to its (amazing) sound design, and it gets much harder during its bravura final scene, where the movie literally goes boom and to places that no sane mind could ever do. No spoilers, but by that point, the music is so intoxicating, and its textured photography so hypnotizing, that it becomes hard to look away, even when the movie begins to explode in total horror. The protagonists fail to understand what they’ve stepped into, and the world around them is in even bigger disarray than they might have thought.
The acting is phenomenal across the board, but that’s not what makes Sirāt such a special piece of filmmaking. The aural design is where the movie really works its magic, and makes us rethink about the powers that a good sound system can offer when thwarting us inside a Hellscape that, we realize, has no way out, and will likely get much worse when the credits roll and the remaining protagonists are off to their next journey. It also makes highly questionable choices that are bound to divide, but no matter – the sound is far too powerful for you to ever look away, and even if you do, you will hear every bone-rattling explosion within your body and not be able to forget you ever sat through this often nihilistic, but frequently exhilarating, motion picture.
Sirāt won’t be leaving your mind anytime soon – and you need to see it big and loud.