The rave suddenly stops, and the story, which Laxe co-wrote with Santiago Fillol, begins like a shot. Armed soldiers appear and order the ravers to leave; the world appears to have descended into violent chaos, although the details of the end of the world are deliberately vague. (When one character asks if World War III has begun, another replies, “It's been the end of the world for a long time.”) As the group disperses, five ravers—Jade, Tonin, Bigi, Steph and Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson)—break away and storm off, heading to another rave. Desperate to find Mara, Luis and Esteban impulsively join them. They drive a beat-up old minivan, less suited for a long journey through the desert than the heavier vehicles their comrades drive. But the nomads are moved by the plight of father and son, as well as by Louis' gift of gasoline, a resource as scarce as water and food.
Despite its visual and aural significance, Sirat is a drama of intimate exchanges and deals, unlikely connections forged in the face of adversity, and small blessings bestowed freely and unexpectedly. Here, in this uninhabited environment, Laxe finds an oasis of community that transcends barriers of origin and language. (The characters speak in snatches of Spanish, French and, very occasionally, Arabic and English.) At one point, Luis assumes that he and Esteban have been abandoned, only to realize early on that their newfound friends are actually returning to help. In moments like these, we grasp the source of the story's mysterious power: the firm understanding that kindness is rare but enduring, and quite possibly an affront to the laws of nature. “Sirat” is a chain of defiantly compassionate actions—noble human improbabilities that, in retrospect, take on an air of fatalistic inevitability.
Laxe, a restless wanderer himself, knows Morocco well. He shot his first feature film, “You Are All Captains” (2011), in Tangier, where he worked for several years in an orphanage for children from disadvantaged families. Some of these children appeared in the film, a formally playful collision of fiction and documentary in which Laxe, also appearing, slyly questioned his role as a European outsider artist. Then came Mimosas (2016), an elusive, hauntingly gorgeous drama about a caravan carrying a dying sheikh through Morocco's Atlas Mountains to his homeland. The film combined the beauty of a travelogue with the opacity of a parable. The most dynamic character was the fiery Muslim preacher who warned his fellow travelers not to go astray either geographically or morally.
“Sirat” drinks deeply “Mimosa”. Both photographs taken on 16mm. In cinematographer Mauro Guerse's film, the river is crossed, an alternative route through the mountains is taken, and the road to salvation turns out to be dangerously narrow indeed. Arabic word cry may refer, among other things, to the razor-thin bridge leading across the abyss of Hell to Heaven – a heavy burden of eschatological significance, but the film takes it on lightly. The characters may be traveling through a windswept Purgatory, but Lax is clearly captivated by the cinematic scope of the journey: the dreamy nocturnal poetry of moving cars, as well as the brutal mechanics of the path, soaked in blood and sweat. As the group struggles to knock the car's tires off a dangerously tilted, uneven road, we're caught up in the treacherous terrain of Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953) and William Friedkin's The Sorcerer (1977). Just like in those movies, a car can be a refuge one moment and a trap the next. Death, although probable from the very beginning, can nevertheless strike when least expected.
What Laxe preserves, and what Clouseau and Friedkin deliberately did not, is a sliver of hope in humanity. Even in the most dire circumstances, characters do not turn on each other in the violent quarrels and betrayals that movie characters are often programmed to do. About the only harsh words came from Louis, in a brief, understandable fit of rage after his dog ingested a raver's feces containing traces of LSD. (The dose turns out to be non-lethal, and much crappier times lie ahead.) What Lax orchestrated is not a simplistic clash of cultures, but a collective reversal of fortunes in which the decisions of fate or Allah prove too cruel and too permanent to provoke a petulant blame game. Who will survive and who won't? The answers will surprise you. At first we are struck by the physical composure of the ravers, their effortless control over their heavily inked and scarred bodies. We're titillated when Tonin, with his prosthetics removed, does a hilarious puppet act with his knee, and delighted when, during a spontaneous walk, Josh straddles two speeding cars, as if he were War Boy from Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) or Jean-Claude Van Damme starring in a Volvo commercial. Later, however, it is Louis—burly, square, fish-out-of-water Louis—who, after a debilitating loss, seems to regain physical control of himself. He's probably never been delusional in his life, but by the end of the film, he's the only one you suspect who could freestyle without fear.
Lopez's performance is astonishing – doubly so for those of us who saw him as a sadistic fascist captain in Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and swore never to trust him again. Here the actor tears a person's soul apart, and then gradually puts it back together piece by piece. It's the best any of us could do, Lopez suggests, after we've lost everything in the world except the world itself. All this means that you should watch Sirat twice: first, for the quick, brutal shock of the experience and, second, for the lasting solace of its spirit and its insistence that the most meaningful families can be created in the darkest of circumstances. Laxe's most resonant painting is not a desert landscape, a fiery explosion, or yet another vision of hell on earth. It's Louis, Bigie, Jade, Steph, Tonin and Josh sleeping in the truck, their bodies pressed against each other – quiet and calm for now, but perhaps not in the general rapture of their dreams. ♦
