Oliver Laxe’s Cannes prize winner about a father’s search for his missing daughter starts impressively then descends into Pythonesque perdition
O
liver Laxe leads his audience into a wilderness of non-meaning in this strange and unrewardingly oppressive film that was the joint jury prize winner at Cannes this year and the recipient of all sorts of critical superlatives. For me, Sirāt is the most overpraised movie of the year – exasperating and bizarre in ways that become less and less interesting and more and more ridiculous as the film wears on.
There is a moment of tragic horror halfway through the action that is not absorbed or clarified and whose (presumed) emotional and spiritual consequences are not conveyed. It simply looks coercive and even slightly farcical. The later explosions in the desert are, frankly, Pythonesque. And yet, as with Laxe’s earlier film Mimosas there are some wonderful visual moments and stylish shots of the Moroccan desert landscape. Veteran Spanish actor Sergi López gives Sirāt some ballast.
Sirāt is the Arabic word for the narrow, perilous path that takes you to paradise, and there is something interestingly ambiguous about the teeming crowds of people we initially see at a rave in the Moroccan desert. It’s a bravura setpiece. They look both like Dionysian ravers and lost souls writhing in hell.
