By John Corrado
Director Oliver Laxe’s Sirât opens on a memorably cinematic scene as a group of outcasts hold a rave in the middle of the Moroccan desert. We see evocative images of massive speakers being set up in the desert, as bodies bop and gyrate in time to the blaring techno music, the beat seeming to reverberate and shake the sand off the ground.
A man, Luis (Sergi López), joined by his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), makes his way between the partying crowd, searching for his missing daughter. He passes around her photo, asking if they have seen her. The man and son will join the ravers on the road, hoping to locate her. This is the premise behind Laxe’s film, an unpredictable ride that begins as a rave movie, and morphs into a desert thriller, and then existential odyssey through hell.
The opening title card informs us that the name Sirât, an Arabic word, refers to a bridge that provides a narrow pathway between paradise and hell; or, a drug-fuelled rave and the sobering morning after. The inherent nihilism of the story could be read as metaphor for the hedonism of spending your life partying, which the film suggests is a response to how the characters view the meaninglessness of life. As the world ends, just keep dancing, seems to be their guiding philosophy.
If Sirât is narratively a bleak film, unfolding with an increasingly apocalyptic, end-of-days feel, it is also a stylistically thrilling one. The impressive cinematography by Mauro Herce, shot on 16mm, adds texture to shots of trucks navigating through the barren landscapes. Kangding Ray’s pulsating techno score provides a driving force behind all of it, a constant beat made to put us in a dark trance.
It’s a suspense-fuelled film, with images that seem designed to evoke everything from George Miller’s Mad Max to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s French classic The Wages of Fear (and William Friedkin’s unofficial American remake Sorcerer). But the underlying emotion of Sirât comes through in the inherent pathos of López’s performance as a father coming to terms with losing his daughter, which stands out amidst a compelling, ragtag group of supporting characters played by non-actors.
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