It’s difficult to shake the fugue that Óliver Laxe’s sun-scorched “Sirât” puts you under. Focusing on a father, Luis (Sergi López), searching for his daughter amidst the rave scene in Morocco, it starts as “Mad Max: Fury Rave” with a dash of “Climax,” before descending into something much more subdued, unvarnished, and terrifying. In these opening moments, where Luis and his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) are hopelessly searching, Laxe showcases a thriving, throbbing ecosystem of ravers who give themselves over to almost worshipful ecstasy in response to the electronic music around them. Kangding Ray’s electronic score is mesmerizing and, as contributor Isaac Feldberg writes, “mirroring the way that Laxe’s narrative … disintegrates like a sculpture crumbling into dust, blowing away in the desert’s howling winds.”
Indeed, the film moves on from the rave scene as Luis and Esteban’s journey takes them further into lands and terrors unknown. The trials and tribulations that Laxe’s characters face are punishing and brutal, as intense as blistering sand on acrid skin. Through radio broadcasts and offhand conversations, the film gestures at a war between two countries that escalates into a World War III-type conflict. For the characters within, they realize that there’s little they can do when the world is crumbling but to keep dancing.
For Laxe, the film’s literal on-screen dance between death and life is one of cinema’s greatest gifts. “Crisis is the best tool that life has. It helps you connect with your essence. When someone dies, we are, of course, sad, but that death also reminds us of our own life,” he reflected.
During the film’s premiere at the New York Film Festival, Laxe and López spoke with RogerEbert.com, their words occasionally being interpreted graciously by Lucia. The two discussed the film’s most shocking and upsetting moment, the gift of working in Morocco, and movies as a medium for meditating on death.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. It contains major spoilers.
Óliver, I’ll start with you. “Mimosas” has been described as a spiritual “Eastern,” and “Sirât” can be thought of as a spiritual road trip film. What draws you to imbuing spirituality into genre?
Oliver Laxe: I don’t know where my artistic practice ends and my spiritual practice begins. They’re related in a way. Since “Mimosas,” this concept of servanthood has grown in me. I strive to serve others and to know myself through my work. Cinema can be a tool for knowing yourself, pushing your limits, and connecting with what surrounds you. At the same time, it can also boost your ego. A spiritual habit I’m trying to cultivate is simplicity, but the life of a filmmaker is the opposite of simplicity.
For an actor, too, I imagine simplicity can be hard to cultivate.
Sergi López: I could have stayed in France working, but I decided to come back to live in the town where my family is. It’s simpler for me … I don’t know what I have to do next week, but I am very clear about where my roots are.
It seems that being present with people who matter the most to you enables a sort of freedom and luxuriation in the creative process that can be hard to embody if you’re in the belly of the beast, pressured to create all the time.
OL: Knowing that Sergi was the way he just described–that he chose to be near his family–that gave me confidence.
Sergi, I’m struck by the outfits you wear in the film. Your wardrobe is much more rigid–the jeans in particular–in comparison to the free-flowing clothes of the ravers. How did you work with costume designer Nadia Acimi to craft a look that helped you better understand Luis and his journey?
SL: First, what I’ll say is that we know very little about Luis and the family dynamic. We don’t know his past; we don’t mention Esteban’s mother; we don’t know where he lives or what his job is. So the outfit becomes a way to grasp something tangible about him, even though so much of him was unknown.
When we see Luis, he’s wearing this blue shirt that I think every man in the world has (laughs). Wearing it helps him become universal; he could be anyone, and all he experiences is something anyone can experience. To your point, the fit I’m wearing stands in contrast with the collective of the ravers, whose clothing models a type of freedom that my character doesn’t initially have.
I’m assuming you prefer a different wardrobe when you dance?
SL: (Laughs) I can dance in any fit. Even dancing naked is okay.
Oliver, you’ve filmed in Morocco for “Mimosas,” and it seems to hold significance for you as an artist. I’m curious about your experience with filming in Morocco back then and what it was like to revisit it with this project.
OL: The biggest difference I’d mention is that coming into “Sirât,” I developed my faith. Values in Morocco, such as acceptance, detachment, gratitude, and patience, are familiar to me and to my Galician culture. While working on this film, I learned to be more connected to my heart than to my brain. The Europeans … we’re sometimes too much in our heads. I’m happy to have found a kind of balance. I think my cinema seeks this balance between the head and the heart. The movies I like, hopefully, allow you to put logic to sleep and invite you to see it with other perceptions. Watch the film with the various tribes and hives of people.
SL: It was my first time filming in Morocco. With this project, Oliver really encouraged me to look within myself because he told me that the film would hopefully ask audiences to do the same. It’s curious how this job came to me and encouraged me to consider the mysteries of life. In the desert, you cannot hide yourself. You have to look inside because you’re alone. You’re small in the expanse of nature. I try to hold that for my work as an actor, and it was something I innately understood while I was shooting.
Maybe it’s due to the free-flowing energy of Kangding Ray’s score, but there are so many moments in this film that feel so primal as if to be unscripted. I’m curious what you all may have discovered about yourselves while in the throes of shooting, and if any serendipitous and unexpected beats found their way into the final film.
SL: Things were scripted, but we certainly had room to play once things started to get going.
OL: The way we were working first was to speak about death and about experiences like this. The cast came to my home in Galicia, and after the first rehearsals, we tried to figure out blocking and positions.
SL: For me, the play of improvisation is happening all the time. It’s important to honor the dialogue, but it’s between those dialogue scenes that we’re alive. In this script, there are many moments without dialogue, so there was freedom to lean into intuition to underscore that we were alive in those moments. Your body has memories, and it often has better ones than you do.
To the film’s most devastating moment, I remember thinking, “How can I play this moment of losing my son? How will I carry my body?” It’s extremely painful, and I wasn’t sure how to play it, but what I had to do was jump into the abyss. My body might know, so I have to get out of my head and let my body take over.
OL: For that scene in particular, it was really painful to write and rehearse it. It’s a difficult scene because I’m not sure I’m able to express what I want to express with it. The scene is “fake” in the sense that what happens on-screen doesn’t happen in real life, but for me, the memory of what we’re rehearsing remains in our bodies. I’ve seen videos of myself the day we shot that devastating scene. My face is full of anguish; it was an anguish to even edit the scene.
It’s not only that Esteban dies, but a dog as well; you have two very vulnerable entities that perish horrifically.
OL: We thought that the best way to take care of those viewing was that they both fell to their deaths. I’m not sadistic, and I don’t want to be cruel to people. I love the people I’m shooting and the actors I’m working with. It’s difficult, but death exists. It’s not my fault. People die, you will die, I will die. I think it’s important to meditate on this. The question is not “why do we die?” We simply have to at some point. When you belong to a tradition like mine, you die when you have to die. The more important question is: How do you die? What’s the way you will die?
What you’re articulating reminds me of the ending sequence where the survivors are dancing. Their movements, in hindsight, seem more liturgical and full of surrender, as if they’re trying to rehearse themselves into an acceptance of death. Does preparing yourself to die allow you to live?
OL: It leads to a sort of surrender.
SL: Luis is sort of giving himself as an offering to God.
OL: I like that you pointed this out about the ending. At some point, life is shaking you and hitting you in the face in a way that your ego is being dissolved. It’s being annihilated, and Luis’ ego is being annihilated. That’s why he’s able to dance. He’s saying, “May your will be done.”
Like Jesus on the cross, where He’s releasing His spirit right before He dies.
OL: Exactly. We’re touching on a universal archetype. To go to paradise, you have to conquer hell. You have to visit your shadows. Crisis is the best tool that life has. It helps you connect with your essence. When someone dies, we are, of course, sad, but that death also reminds us of our own life.
You’ve previously shared how we have thanatophobia and how the medium of cinema can be a way to invite the spectators to die.
SL: Cinema is a way to meditate about death. That’s what happens in this movie. The more you meditate on death, the more you want the profit of life.
Are there films that have helped you both confront death or at least made it feel more manageable?
SL: I’m not a big cinephile, but “Bambi” was one.
OL: In terms of cinema, I’d say “The Naked Island.” All of Ozu’s films in some way. “Midsommar” is also one. Death is just a door to come back home.
A line I loved was when Nadia talks about the beauty of playing music on broken speakers, saying, “You never know if it will be the last time it works.” Can you speak more to the sound design and the role of “imperfect” sound in the film?
OL: The sound has three dimensions. There’s the cathartic dimension that’s the beat and techno elements. That’s all traditional rave music. There’s also an existentialist layer. David, the musician, made us feel an afterglow of sorts after listening. Then there’s a metaphysical element, where the music is more ambient and feels like we’re working with the first sounds of the universe.
“Sirât” opens in select theaters via NEON tomorrow, February 6th, expanding over the course of the month.
