Road to Nowhere: Movie Review of Sirat
★★★★
By Geoff Carter
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
The language of cinema is a sophisticated complex of image, words, actions, rhythm, color, and motion. It encompasses the familiar and describes—if not defines—the unknown. From traditional narratives like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, or even One Battle After Another to movies that eschew normal storytelling techniques for more visceral, intuitive, and internalized stylings instead of boy meets, boy loses girl, yadayadayada…, these films explore existential reaches of the human and spiritual experience.
One example of this type of film is David Lowery’s A Ghost Story in which the spirit of a man is doomed to live in the house he lived in even after his loved ones leave. The ghost (Casey Affleck) is portrayed as a silent presence covered in a sheet with two eyes cut out—the most familiar of tropes. There is little or no dialogue and the onus is on the viewer to determine what the film is expressing about loss, isolation, existence, and death.
Lost in Translation, Playtime, and Under the Skin are other examples of non-traditional narrative films. A sort of hybrid between the traditional and non-traditional “vibe” narrative is The Testament of Ann Lee. In many ways, the film is a traditional biopic of the founder of the Shaker religion, but the scenes of worship transcend the story, nudging the viewer into a sphere of existential freedom and spiritual ecstasy without dialogue, using only song and choreography to draw the viewer into that arc of spiritualism.
Oliver Laxe’s film Sirat is another film that seeks to move into a realm of consciousness beyond social norms, mounting its vision on only the barest bones of a story. The opening text card of the film states, “There is a bridge called SIRAT that links hell and paradise. Whoever crosses it is warned that it is narrower than a strand of hair, sharper than a sword” and so begins this particular road movie.
The film begins in the desert as a gigantic rave is taking place. The first ten minutes or so of the film consists of just visuals and music. Close-up shots of hands putting together speaker columns eventually pulls out to reveal the people putting it together, and then cuts to dozens of people dancing to the thumping beat. Initially shot from an overhead angle, the viewer’s eye is caught and held by the colors and movements of the undulating mass. It is hypnotic.
As night falls, we see Luis (Sergi Lopez) and his young son Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona) asking rave-goers if they have seen Luis’s daughter Mar, who has been missing for months. Luis has heard is attending the raves.
They speak to Jade (Jade Oukid) and her friends Bigui (Richard Bellamy), Stef (Stefania Gadda), Tonin (Tonin Javier), and Josh (Joshua Liam Hendesron) who have not see Mar, but mention to Luis there is another rave they will be heading to after the conclusion of the present one.
Soldiers come the next day to escort the ravers from the desert for their own safety. Although it is never fully explained, it seems as if a global conflict—perhaps World War III—is erupting. While being escorted from the site, Jade’s group breaks away in their heavy-duty campers. Luis follows.
After a stop, Jade and her friends try to dissuade Luis from going with them. They warn him their minivan is not suited for travel in the rough desert terrain, but Luis—determined to find his daughter—follows them. After the group assists him across a river, they begin travelling together, eventually agreeing to share food and gas.
Luis and Esteban bond with the other others. When Esteban’s dog Papi gets sick, Tonin reassures the boy the dog is fine, telling him Papi has merely eaten some LSD-laced shit left behind by Bigui and that will be fine after he sleeps it off. Their journey continues through the desert and into the mountains.
Critics have compared to Sirat to other desert road movies like Mad Max: Fury Road, Nomadland, Sorcerer, and The Wages of Fear. Besides travelling through highly dangerous terrain, these films share an almost palpable sense of dread and tension—as if something horrifying is lurking just beyond the next hilltop. The roads they are traveling are indeed connected to hell.
While Luis has a tangible goal of finding his daughter, (although we never discover why he suddenly after her months of absence, he feels so compelled to go to such lengths to find her), the ravers seem to be less focused in their quest. They seem far less concerned with future or the past as they do with the present, a sensibility that is reflected throughout the film, which presents nothing of its characters’ pasts and very little of their futures. Like Jade and Bigui and the others, the reality of Sirat exists only in the present.
When asked by Esteban if he misses his family, Bigui says that he prefers the family he has now. He has shucked his past in lieu of a present in which he and his new family are constantly seeking new rave thrills. Their reality is movement, sound, and the community of the rave. There is nothing else. They drive through the desert, looking for the beat, the harmony, and the company of others. This is their paradise. These escapist thematics echo Easy Rider, Zabriskie Point, Vanishing Point, and other counterculture classics, yet there are elements here that hint at the impossibility of escape. The desert seems reluctant to let any of them—or us, for that matter—go.
Maro Herce’s brilliant cinematography, featuring the beautiful landscapes of Teruel and northern Morocco, emphasizes the unforgiving and bleak world through which this group—and all of us—travel. His camera work, along with Kangding Ray’s hypnotic sound design, is more than haunting. It taps a deep sensibility of alienation, apathy, and desperation—and hope. Our ravers are running away from their past, their fears—we never find out—by running towards something else, the music and the movement, the bass whomp that replaces the aches in their hearts and bones.
Sergi Lopez and Bruno Nunez Arjona are the only professional actors in the film. The rest were selected in a street-casting process; some are ravers themselves, reflecting an increasing trend in film casting, including recent productions like Anora and Nomadland. In Sirat, the ravers are engaging and genuine in a way that is hard to describe, let alone define.
Some events in this film happen without foreshadowing, prelude, or warning, all the more shocking because although the audience anticipated the worst to happen, we had no warning as it did happen.
Laxe has mentioned this was one of his most political films. While watching, I couldn’t help wondering if the casting of two amputees was deliberate, perhaps a visual comment on the scars we bear or as a testament to an abhorrent form of political torture. It is never made clear if these disabilities are the cause for disillusionment and flight are never clarified, but the fact that the crew flees the presence of the army speaks to their rejection of the status quo. Disassociation and apathy is the creed of these desert travelers.
Sirat is a hypnotic, absorbing road film that magnetically pulls the viewer not only into the rhythms, vibes, and flows of the people involved, but into the vastness and emptiness of the desert itself. It does not focus on plot, individual character, or theme. It is all about the vibe of life and the suddenness and brutality with which it can end or change forever. Like life, it dances on the razor edge between hell and paradise.