SIRAT – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)
Early on in Sirat, the stunning and devastating film by Oliver Laxe, one character asks another, “Is this what the end of the world feels like?” The other answers, “It’s been the end of the world for a long time.” They’re only partially serious, observing society at a kind of remove, only tourists at the end of the world, as many of us think we are.
The film quickly dispenses with this remove, and it does so without any warning – literal and metaphorical guardrails suddenly evaporating. We are plunged into the reality that the end of the world is not waiting to announce itself. Sirat follows a charming motley crew of nomadic Europeans ravers, somewhere in southern Morocco. A party in a desert fills up the screen with this moonscape beset by electronic beats, basslines, dancing bodies in various states of rejection of polite society. We are totally immersed, easily led into this pilgrimage, ready to hand ourselves over to this camaraderie, to feeling fully embodied in dance and drugs, the rest of the world melting away. The beautiful and unrelenting score, by Kanding Ray, never lets you unhook.
Our guides are Luis (Sergi Lopez) and Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona), a Spanish father and son who have descended into this stark landscape and its rhythms; they are looking for their daughter and sister Mar, handing out “Missing” leaflets with her picture, threading through the dancers to ask whether any have seen her. When one group tells them that she may be headed to a rave deeper in the desert that they are going to next, near the border with Mauritania, the father asks to join their caravan. With great consternation they finally agree – this lifestyle, this desert and the growing menace that announces itself early on, seem like no place for this man and child. There is a vaguely defined armed conflict; the first rave is interrupted by the Moroccan army, who have come with buses to ferry the foreigners home. Apart from Luis and Esteban, the main cast consist of non-actors from the European free party movement, whom Laxe met and danced with and lived alongside– seasoned denizens of the nomadic dancing world – their tattoos, hardened faces, mysteriously missing limbs, and jerry-rigged vans, seem dispatched from Mad Max, from a world already past the end.
And yet, these nomads, who worry for the safety of their new friends, are in many ways blind to their own complacency. They may feel closer to the realities of the world, and to themselves, but they have chosen to live in the margins. They can always opt back in, they think they can trade in this volatility — their European, or American, or Australian passports can provide passage back in from the fray, back to where the guardrails still feel more firmly fixed. Ultimately the film shows that there is no passage back. But there is a path to what follows next.
In Islam, Sirat is a bridge that spans the chasm of hell and connects this world with paradise over which only the righteous can cross. While the film aims to show that they are through to the other side, it is that bridge, and the need to understand its shape and meaning, that comes through most clearly. It is a haunting movie. Few things can actually shake one into feeling the urgency of the moment. Somehow this movie does. The dialogue and actions are quick and distilled – like individual words in a poem that pierce the previous reality they delicately laid out.
ABOUT YAEL FRIEDMAN
Yael Friedman is a journalist based in New York. She covers art and culture and their intersection with economics, politics, and history. She has written extensively about urban history and urban planning, particularly New York’s, analyzing its past and assessing its present and future. Her articles have appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, 1843, The Conversationalist, The Economist, The Daily Beast, Haaretz, Forward, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Urban Omnibus.