A father searching for his missing daughter joins a caravan of desert ravers on a bass-pounding road trip with shocking turns.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Not very long ago, the polyglot effort “Sirāt” was a film few had heard of. Now, this Cannes award-winner is an Academy Award nominee for best international feature and best sound and a must-see among film buffs. A film in the tradition of such road-movie classics as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “The Wages of Fear” and George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Sirāt” starts at a rave set in Morocco, but was shot at the base of the red, sculptural cliffs known as the Rambla de Barrachina in Spain.
Music, mostly grinding, pounding bass composed by Berlin-based electronica composer Kangding Ray, blasts from giant speakers set up in a desert where attendees sway to the palpable sound. Yes, if these cliffs could speak…
In the crowd are a Spanish-speaking middle-aged man, Luis (Spanish actor Sergi Lopez, one of the few professional actors in the cast), and his young son Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona), and their little dog Pipa. They ask rave attendees to look at photographs they carry of their adolescent daughter/sister, Mar, who has gone missing for five months and is reported to be with a group of “ravers.”
Suddenly, trucks full of soldiers arrive, and the ravers are ordered to “evacuate” because fighting is expected to begin in the area (NATO is in the midst of some sort of terrible crisis). Luis and Esteban, who drive a small SUV, get away from the soldiers’ caravan along with two, bigger RV vehicles, containing a group of neo-punk/hippie types, including a compassionate young woman recalling Amy Winehouse with face tattoos named Jade (Jade Oukid) and a bearded man with a prosthetic leg named Tonin (Tonin Javier) and a man missing a hand named Bigui (Richard Bellamy). Are they veterans of some world-ending conflict that has just gotten “hotter?” Is this our future?
Also among the RV-driving ravers are the tough, aging beauty Steff (Stefania Gadda) and another man named Josh (Josh Liam Herdersen). Thus, Luis and Esteban join forces with the ragtag band of grotty road rebels, and after securing cans of gas from Arabic-speaking dealers on donkeys, they begin to climb a treacherous and terrifying mountain road that will spiral them into the sky with nothing separating them from destruction except a few feet of slippery rocks and a heavily-potholed “road.” It’s all very existential and terrifying, and things go from the proverbial bad to worse in ways that suggest a realistic/surrealistic end of the world.
Shot in Super 16mm in Spain and Morocco, “Sirāt” is a natural follow-up to French-born Spaniard Oliver Laxe’s 2016 film “Mimosas,” which is also set in the Atlas Mountains and also involves a death march. Throughout the action of “Sirāt”—the title is a reference to a mythical hair-thin bridge between heaven and hell—we are bathed in composer Ray’s music both on the soundtrack and as music played by the travelers. It is a vital and tangible part of the experience of watching “Sirāt.” Think of Hans Zimmer and those “Dune” movies. The sound grasps us in its hands, squeezes us, and smacks us around. With dialogue switching between French and Spanish, a setting evoking the Old Testament, and a screenplay full of apocalyptic visions, existential dread, and sudden, violent death, “Sirat” is one of a kind in the current film climate, though it arguably devolves into overkill. It is certain to find an ardent (and morbid death-cult?) following, and maybe even inspire a major studio to take a look at multi-lingual director-co-writer Laxe and wonder if he is the new Denis Villeneuve.
‘Sirāt’
Rating: R for language, some violent content and drug use.
Cast: Sergi Lopez, Bruno Nunez Arjona, Steffania Gadda
Director: Oliver Laxe
Writers: Santiago Fillol, Laxe
Running time: 1 hour, 55 Minutes
Where to watch: In theaters
Grade: A-
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