Sirât – Film Review
by Hugh Maguire

Director – Oliver Laxe
Writers – Santiago Fillol, Oliver Laxe
Stars – Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Stefania Gadda

Garlanded with praise from critics and film festivals internationally this is nonetheless a challenging watch.   It is not easy viewing – intoxicating after a fashion and with great acting, camerawork and soundtrack.  But what is it about?  There is the very vaguest of narrative structures, and more than a handful of shock surprises, which take us off in another direction.

Following a prologue detailing the erection of a large sound system, we open with a concerned father and his charming son searching anxiously through the crowds at an illegal rave somewhere in the deserts of Morocco.  Entirely supported by an alternative spaced-out crowd, predominantly European drifters, there is hardly a Moroccan in sight.  It is as if the North African kingdom is reduced to party central for a crowd of Europe’s disaffected drifters.  All the while, there is a background beat of the sound system, which seems to exclude all capacity to talk and think.  Father and son are more than an anomaly as they wander through the crowds, handing out ‘Missing Person’ fliers for the daughter/sister who has been missing for months. Broken up by the military, the crowds disperse with a dedicated few heading off deeper into the desert for another rave, venue unknown.  All we know is the journey is not for the fainthearted. It is like an arduous pilgrimage ordeal – a climb of Croagh Patrick, for example.  Significantly, the Islamic concept of ‘Sirat’ refers to a pathway over hell leading to Paradise.  Like some needy stray dog, the father and son end up attached to this group, driving an unsuitable car, with limited food and fuel supplies.  They form an unlikely group, but through the layers of risks and endurance, their shared common humanity shines through.

This journey into the desert forms the main thrust, in so far as there is one, of the film, and the search for the missing daughter becomes of secondary interest.  Instead, there is a whole journey into the unknown with the forces of weather and terrain posing repeated threats.  All the while, there are occasional references to the end of the world, and a war (World War III) seems to be looming at the unnamed border – although we are not given details. The journey itself and the pitfalls along the way are the actual narrative.  The difficult terrain and its challenges bring to mind the celebrated Yves Montand vehicle Le Salaire de la Peur (1953 – Wages of Fear), where likewise the journey itself is the narrative.  Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) also comes to mind.  Unlike Herzog’s rain-soaked jungles here, the sunlight dazzles and the sound system is occasionally rehabilitated to create a primal-like sound – a roar into which performer and viewer drift almost hypnotically.  The suggestion seems to be that we are all, despite differences, primal creatures, responding to light and sound.  We are all here for a short time.  Life is fleeting, and death or survival is arbitrary.  Some will live, and some die.  There is no reason why, and no master plan – it is all some mystery, and we drift through this experience.  Life itself is as much an escape as the experience of the LSD-filled ravers.  Ending shots imply that we are all part of this experience together, the great and the good, the not-so-good and the marginalised, all on the one route, one sirāt, being brought to an unknown destination.  It is a film to be absorbed by if not entertained.