Psycho. #68

Can we get you thoughts on Sirāt? I went to see it based off your IG raves, and quite enjoyed it. I would love to read your thoughts, especially on the screenplay, which I seem to remember you said was really well constructed (or something of the sort).

Quite???! Quite enjoyed it? Who the hell do you think you are? Coming in here, Caspar Salmon’s Psycho column at Animus dot com, all hopped up with your unbothered opinion, neither this nor that, not hot or cold, and asking for further thoughts from me? Where do you get off? Oh, I suppose you also don’t particularly love or loathe Marmite? You neither like nor dislike Taylor Swift? Wow, good for you, we’re all SO impressed!

Sorry, let me take a minute. 

OK we’re back. Thank you for going to see it based on my Instagram activity, at any rate – I’m feeling pretty heroic right now for saving the film industry, one viewer at a time. I will say, however, that in the time I spent making a wild song and dance about Sirāt, earlier this year, it did quite frequently occur to me that I was gassing up a frankly rather difficult work, and one which many viewers could find utterly devastating. A little like being asked for a music recommendation on a sunny day, and blithely recommending Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima”. I imagine the poor sap in receipt of that recommendation dialling it up on Spotify, connecting their bluetooth speaker and blasting it out in the kitchen as they cook a spaghetti carbonara for the kids. I’m standing in a corner of the room, for some reason, and over the oppressive din I shout to them, “Well? Really kicks you right in the head, doesn’t it! Bloody hell. You’ll want a lie-down after this!” 

That’s to say: not all art is for everybody, and Sirāt could hardly be accused of being a crowd-pleaser. In fact its almost aggressive loudness, some-time obtuseness, refusal to play by narrative codes and unwillingness to provide easy answers – elements that many people might find off-putting or frustrating – are what I admire most about the film. And yet, the film is also very appealing in its formal aspects, its aesthetic and sound design; and it plays out as a kind of thrill ride that only becomes more and more horrifying, more desperate, as time goes on. 

The film’s immediacy is down to its immaculately constructed screenplay, which I was able to pick apart more freely on a second watch. During my first watch I think I was more stunned than anything, letting the film wash over me, or perhaps a better phrase would be beat me up. Seeing it a second time, in the company of friends, I noticed much more easily the immaculate visual storytelling of those initial scenes, which almost wordlessly bring in characters and sketch their interpersonal dynamics, set up the film’s MacGuffin, and launch the narrative (or rather, what we think the narrative will be). This is all written, of course, and filmed meticulously: Oliver Laxe sets his camera in a noisy rave, picking out a few revellers who will stay with us as characters in the film, and then plants his two protagonists, a man and boy looking for their daughter/sister, in the middle of this havoc. We clearly perceive the differences between these ravers and this reduced family unit of two, travelling with their dog, a little broken but hopeful and persistent. 

Yet, even in this tightly conceived set-up, Laxe shows a remarkable gift for filming what cannot be contained: the exuberance and the folly of life itself; a kind of mystical, shamanic communion with the unknown; and nature itself, our burning world – hot, oppressive, magnificent – accommodating humans in what feels like a symbiotic relationship but which is more like a kind of disagreement. These people have briefly plied the world to their needs – blasting out their whirring beats in an arid valley, projecting a neon lightshow against a cliff-face, and using drugs to enter into an alternate reality – but, of course, the universe around them cannot be subordinated. And the idea of seeking an answer, as the father and son do; the very concept of returning to some reassuring sort of order, soon begins to feel like very folly. 

Laxe brilliantly holds these considerations together, controlling the storyline imperiously while basking in a kind of daredevil freedom inspired by his outcast characters, and as the story progresses he gradually flirts more and more with a disquieting unreason, or chaos. The film seems to seesaw between these modes, because in many ways Laxe is careful to ground Sirāt in a reality that can easily be apprehended: through a series of adroit narrative nips and tucks, he confidently places us in a dystopian near-future, where petrol is sold at a premium and World War III is being fought in some undisclosed part of the world, perhaps very nearby. His characters are well drawn – charming, hedonistic crusties who speak Spanish and French, who prize their freedom, and who seem to have thrown off the shackles of their own family connections in order to find their own kinship together. Impossible to overstate how well depicted these characters are, how perfectly costumed and coiffed: one particular character, the apparently British-born Josh, his tufty little mullet running with grease, bleary from lack of sleep, drugs reverberating round his head, resounds so heavily of day 5 of a festival that I could almost smell him off the screen. 

These are the touches that I revelled in on my second go-around, because I could see how brilliantly, how discreetly it was built: all the little details in the dialogue, all those extraordinarily tactile elements in its visual conception, feeding into its storyline, fleshing out character and foreshadowing the – SPOILERS! – overwhelming anguish to come. 

Because bad stuff happens in Sirāt. Shit goes down, let’s just say that. Even writing so long after the film graced UK cinemas, I’m reluctant to discuss the narrative shocks, the wrongfooting that has an almost evil feeling to it. Why evil? Because Laxe, having established everything so assuredly and comprehensively, having beguiled us with the sweetness that he allows to exist within the rough-and-ready shambles he depicts, and having revelled in the sheer sensual pleasures of our world like a dog sticking its head out of a car window, then shows himself utterly merciless in the way his film strikes these elements down. This happens suddenly. Gone is any kind of sense; gone is any kind of reassurance that you might gain from recognising the familiar: where Sirāt had previously appealed to our senses, it now takes aim at our gut. This is where terror lives. That’s where you will feel the horror of what comes to pass – the sheer lawlessness, the unforgiving randomness, of this world; it will reside in the pit of your stomach, staying with you long after the shocks have subsided.

This chaos that Sirāt deals in is a kind of overpowering, blunt, dismaying force that appears to hang over these characters who only want to perceive some kind of sign, to receive a direction of some sort. Instead, broken and blundering, they must contend with a force that has no consideration for them at all. And in the imperturbable way that Laxe metes out these punishments, it can feel like has very little consideration for us, the viewer. How to think of his attitude towards us as anything but contemptuous, mocking our need for comfort, for resolution? 

I don't see it like that, in part because of the quivering humanity that Laxe shows in his portrayal of these characters. If Sirāt knocks you on your bum, that can only be because it has totally drawn you in beforehand. Oliver Laxe coaxes beautiful performances out of his cast, especially from the great Sergi López, attest to this humanity. These characters are already bruised and broken by the world; we now see their very bodies receive more agony, register more fear in so many flinches and darting glances. Laxe does not dishonour his characters. But he is determined to depict brutality, and steadfast in using brutal means to do so. That is as it should be, and it is even a compliment to spectators, a gift of sorts, to put us through these different stages of deep feeling, and to trust that we will accept his project. 

There is also – and this is perhaps a harder proposition to contend with – a discomfiting giddiness of sorts in Laxe's dispensation of violence. Perhaps it's useful to think of the way that gallows humour can get one through grief; or how some stark shocks can somehow provide a kind of exhilaration in their savagery. At any rate, Sirāt plays out in large part as spectacle. Some may find this objectionable, but again I think that this mode is apt for Oliver Laxe's aims, because it makes us feel its lurid highs and crushing lows. If you find yourself letting out a sort of high fluting laugh after jumping out of your skin, your heart pounding in its cage, your stomach held prey to a hollow pang of misery, then you have validated these means, as tasteless as they seem to you.  

Back to Sergi López, if I may, before wrapping this up. Seeing this man on screen, with all the force and intelligence he possesses, his sheer bodily presence, his utterly changeable character, has been one of the great pleasures of my film-going life over the last 30 years. I first watched him in the shuffling little independent film Western, a surprise breakout at the French box office in the 90s in which his everyman appeal, his good big face, carried the movie, before then watching him serve up a delicious type of Hitchcockian horror in Harry He's Here To Help and instil utter fear and revulsion in Pan's Labyrinth. 

This is a European actor par excellence, such as we used to see more of in the 60s and 70s of Bogarde, Piccoli or Mastroianni, flitting between countries and projects, playing a lover or a bum or an oracle with equal ease and fervour. It is always a pleasure to see López show up and serve a film, because he doesn't showboat but instead puts himself in service of a project, using the remarkable set of tools available to him. Sirāt represents a high watermark for him: just seeing his body here, strong, reassuring, fat and helpless, buffeted by the elements, would be pleasure enough in itself. But there is so much more depth to come, so much colour, and a kind of titanic wrestling with the world that he undergoes here; and throughout, López’s gorgeous cow-eyes describe all manner of conflicts and peril, on top of telling story and establishing chemistry with all his non-professional castmates, discreetly pulling everything together. These things are a privilege to witness, and this work places him among such greats as Harry Dean Stanton, Harvey Keitel, Bruno Ganz, Mastroianni, in the way that these performers were able to both carry and serve a film at once.

Laxe uses López wisely, and is lucky to have him; but the bulk of the film's genius is all his own. Nobody ever wants to overstate a movie's greatness, but perhaps I can put it this way: there is no possible answer to the challenge, “Name a film like Sirāt.”