Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Óliver Laxe
Starring: Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Richard Bellamy, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid
"It's not for listening, it's for dancing" is how a character in Sirāt describes techno music. She could just as well be talking about Oliver Laxe's film itself. This is a movie where the plot is secondary to the vibe. Attempt to tune into its unconvincing and ultimately frustrating narrative and all you'll hear is noise. Give yourself over to its atmosphere, its tension-filled set-pieces, its gorgeous visuals and its throbbing sound design and you'll find some reward.
The premise initially suggests we're in for a riff on The Searchers or one of Paul Schrader's gritty reworkings of that John Ford western. Middle-aged Luis (Sergi Lopéz) is searching for his daughter Mar, who left home five months ago and hasn't been seen since. We suspect that Mar probably doesn't want to be found, a notion compounded by the fact that Luis' search has brought him to South Morocco and a gathering of nomadic ravers. With his adolescent son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) by his side, Luis finds himself surrounded by crusties who have turned on, tuned in and dropped out of society, devoting their lives to finding the next rave. Mar is nowhere to be found, but a group of ravers suggest that she could be found at another gathering set to be held deep in the desert. Despite their warnings about the hostile landscape they must travel through, Luis insists on following this group through the desert.
It's at this point that Sirāt switches gears and becomes a vehicular survival thriller in the vein of Ice Cold in Alex, The Wages of Fear and its William Friedkin-directed remake Sorcerer. A small caravan consisting of two RVs and Luis' car makes its way through volatile terrain, encountering obstacles like rivers and steep cliffs, later leading to the most nail-biting minefield sequence since Kelly's Heroes.
These set-pieces are well-mounted and greatly enhanced by the sort of muscular, practical filmmaking we don't see much of today. Rather than recreating the unsympathetic Moroccan desert in the comfort of a soundstage, Laxe and his crew have gone out to the deserts of Spain and Morocco to capture images that are simultaneously unnerving and entrancing. There is a sense that this land could kill our protagonists at any moment, but also that it would be a beautiful place to die. In this way it is a spiritual cousin of Joe Carnahan's The Grey, in which a group of men with aimless lives find themselves in similarly hostile terrain.
Where Sirāt is found lacking is in the human drama department. There is none of the tension you might expect between the bourgeois Luis and his hippy sherpas. After some brief apprehension, the two groups embrace each other. Luis needs the ravers to lead him through the desert, while they need the money he provides for petrol. As such, there is a distinct lack of conflict between Luis and the sort of people he would likely usually cross the road to avoid. Also under-developed is the film's backdrop of all this playing out as something close to a third world war breaks out. We hear the odd snippet of news on the radio, but it never actually impacts the narrative.
There is an incident halfway through Laxe's film that will prove a litmus test for viewers. If you can continue enjoying the movie in the same manner after said incident, good for you. For this viewer, it was a perfect example of why Hitchcock famously decreed that you should never repeat a certain mistake he made in one of his early films. After that incident, which I can't even hint at so as not to spoil its shock, the film's stakes are considerably lessened. I simply stopped caring about the fates of the characters, largely because I didn't swallow their reaction as anything close to how human beings would actually react in the aftermath of such an event. As the convoy carried on with its quest, my nails began to slowly dig themselves out of the armrests in which I had buried them and I found myself merely appreciating Sirāt's technical virtuosity rather than engaging with it on an emotional level.
Sirāt is in UK/ROI cinemas from February 27th.
