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The Music Guides the Way: Oliver Laxe and Gaspar Noé Discuss “Sirāt”
Sirāt When Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt premiered at Cannes this year, it caught both those familiar with his work as well as new viewers off guard; that the film takes an unexpected turn in its second half is only part of its disorienting effect. Where his first three, score-free features defaulted to the quiet and contemplative, Sirāt is nearly an action movie and accordingly nerve-wracking, increasingly suspenseful and—thanks in large part to Kangding Ray’s excellent electronic score—sometimes so deafeningly loud that it’s been known to literally make projection booths shake.
With a larger budget and longer schedule than Laxe has had before, Sirāt tracks Luis (Sergi López), a father in search of a daughter who’s disappeared. He believes she might be at a desert rave. She’s not, but a diverse party crew who travel in their own van—including two amputees (Tonin Janvier and Richard Bellamy)—end up helping Luis and his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) on their search, an odyssey that takes an increasingly perilous turn for the duo and their dog. (Pipa, posthumously awarded the Grand Jury Palm Dog prize along with a canine castmate, belonged to cast member Jade Oukid.) During the film’s initial Oscar-qualifying run, Laxe published an open letter essentially asking critics to allow audiences a spoiler-free experience, so that description will suffice here.
Though the active pursuit of suspense is new, Sirāt is a logical though unexpected evolution of Laxe’s work to date. Like Laxe’s first and second features, 2010’s You All Are Captains and 2016’s Mimosas, Sirāt is set and shot in Morocco (in this case, for financing reasons, part of the production had Laxe’s native Spain stand in). Laxe taught and lived in Morocco for many years, an experience he used as the starting point for Captains. In a self-reflexive Kiarostamian vein, Captains stars Laxe himself as a self-indicting “neo-colonialist” filmmaker teaching a group of unimpressed Moroccan children how to make movies. He’s art-damaged and doesn’t gel with them; they rebel and end up taking control of the film. Directing themselves, the final shot finds them marching deeper across a field toward a castle, a shot held at sustained duration. This climactic trek is grimly echoed in Sirāt’s finale during a desert crossing where the stakes are much higher. Likewise, a Sirāt sequence where a miniature automative caravan makes its twisting way along a perilous cliff echoes a sequence in Mimosas where a hand-held caravan makes a similar journey. As with both earlier films, Sirāt draws upon Laxe’s adopted Sufi faith for a spiritual underpinning. The secular found family’s pursuit of ecstatic dance has devotional echoes, as whirling dance can also be part of religious rituals in Sufism, practiced simultaneously with dhikr, a form of oral worship. From his third feature, 2019’s Fire Will Come, Laxe brings along the sense of epic spectacle (and destruction) of the forest fires that open and close that work.
After Gaspar Noé met Laxe at a party, we asked the former filmmaker—whose own work, including Irréversible and Climax, shows familiarity with a different strand of techno-driven dance venues—to continue the conversation. After a one-week Oscar-qualifying run this year, Sirāt enters release from NEON on February 6.—Vadim Rizov
Noé: I always avoid reading reviews when a movie comes out, especially when they say the film is good, so I didn’t read anything before seeing Sirāt for the first time. Then, I read several articles about the movie where they cited cinematic influences. Some were obvious, but some surprised me. Did you really think of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Laxe: Yes, of course.
Noé: When you see the speakers in the middle of the desert, it seems like a message from another dimension, but instead of enlightening the monkeys, it enlightens the desert punks.
Laxe: We also do these zoom-ins where we go inside the speakers. It’s as though we were trying to scrutinize the secret of the universe—which is often found in music, in sound—and entering into that mystery. I’m currently working on a project for the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. I’m mixing the geometric shapes of speakers with the geometric shapes of caves, Zoroastrian and Muslim temples, playing around with shapes, which I think have a lot of commonalities [with the speaker designs].
Noé: There is also another moment in the film when you hear the song of the muezzin, which is the only musical moment that is not linked to techno music. It reminded me of The Exorcist, where the muezzin is singing in the middle of the desert.
Laxe: Well, the beginning of The Exorcist is the most demonic thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Noé: But it’s also like saying that Catholics are coming to the Muslim desert. Now that everyone is obsessed with the idea of the end of the world coming from the Middle East, the film is very contemporary.
Laxe: It seems that this time the war is in the north, rather than in the south. It’s as though they are fleeing to the south, and the refugees were the ones coming from the north.
Noé: I noticed this second time around that one character is missing a leg and the other is missing part of an arm, but you introduce that later in the film. You first show their faces and then, after a while, viewers realize that they are missing a limb or part of a limb.
Laxe: Yes, it’s shown almost as if by accident, not emphasizing it too much. Nevertheless, we did have a discussion about it. The first issue was having two people missing limbs. It was an issue because there’s nothing worse than when you, as an author, want to say things. Bigui lost his hand in Paris three years before we started shooting; he had been in the script for 15 years, and he’s a friend. I did have doubts about having two amputees. But in the end, I said to myself, “I want Bigui—a beautiful Peter Pan, a poet.” In the end, I took full responsibility for this, but I think it’s not overly emphasized. Then, the sequence where Tonin plays with his leg…
Noé: I had forgotten about that shot, and when I saw the film today, I was surprised. Sometimes, you forget about certain shots in a film, and I forgot about that sequence. I found it very funny. Another moment that is also very funny is when the dog gets sick, especially the reason why he gets sick.
Laxe: Yes, LSD. You liked that, right? Watching it at the premiere in Cannes, I had a really hard time because I said, “Oh my God, I’ve gone too far. The film is too harsh, too rough.” The intention for me was to have a balance, for the viewer to continue loving these characters. In that sequence you see that Tonin and Bigui are like two children because they are laughing, while the others are much more concerned about the dog and trying to calm the child down. I think there’s a balance overall, but that sequence in particular is quite punk.
Noé: What surprised me a lot is that you couldn’t have known, when you screened the film at Cannes, the tremendous commercial success the film would have. It is surprising for a film that is so turbulent, dark and poetic but also has a very dramatic side. In general, films that do well commercially are very polished, and here the humor is very dark. It’s not easy humor for the vast majority, and it’s a huge hit.
Laxe: Yes, and it’s a film that is very critical of our way of life and our world. Politically, it’s also quite bold. I made it with that intention, though. I trust the audience, and I also trusted my previous films, even though they didn’t do well with the public. This time, because I had more help, I was able to shoot for seven weeks instead of four, which was usual for my other films, and in the end that paid off. But I think that people in general are tired of seeing the same movies, right? They’re tired of always seeing the same thing, of not feeling anything when they go to the movies, of not feeling any intensity, any kind of emotion.
Noé: I think there’s also a generational aspect to it. Suddenly, people recognize themselves in the film, and there’s no other similar film with these kinds of characters around now.
Laxe: Deep down, I’ve spoken to my generation. That’s one of those nice things that I think is good for cinema, that a young audience has gone to see it. That was the intention, and they’ve gone pretty crazy about the film on their social media, on Instagram and so on. It’s a generation I actually dance with when I’m at raves. Even though we’re 10 or 20 years apart, I think I share a certain detachment, a certain awareness that this world is not sustainable, and maybe a lack of role models. I started watching arthouse films very late, when I was 20. At that time, I was very lost. I didn’t have any role models, and cinema was for me a bit of a lifeline or at least warmed me up inside. I wanted to do a bit of the same for this disoriented generation. I don’t know how it was for you. I don’t know what you were like when you were 20.
Noé: When I was 20, I liked to get disoriented. But I think that to this day I’ve never been to a rave in the desert. I’ve never been to a real rave. I’ve been to nightclubs. I go less now, but I’m a nightclub rat, not a rave rat.
Laxe: You’re a clubber. In another interview, we’ll talk about your past in Berghain.
Noé: And do you go to raves often?
Laxe: I try to go at least once a year. I really like it. I think it’s a dance floor with less ego than in a disco, club or festival. There’s something social about it that I like. There are no posers; the guys and girls are all mixed together. There’s not so much gender separation and no DJ at the front to idolize, no groupies. You’re dancing in front of a speaker.
Noé: Nowadays, even in nightclubs, you see people filming the DJ with their cell phones.
Laxe: Exactly. At a free party, people are more modest; they don’t take out their cell phones—less ego and more ritual. Everyone does their own thing, and I think it’s a good ceremony.
Noé: What I also like about the film is that there’s no negative discourse about drugs or plants. People get high however they want. There’s a moment when you see the father, who is completely lost, and they suggest he take a plant, and you think, “Oh, no! Everything is going to go to hell.” But then, little by little, he gets an unexpected burst of energy and starts dancing.
Laxe: Let’s be clear: I didn’t want to glorify or whitewash raves or drugs. It was a delicate issue because, as in all aspects of our society, everything has a toxic side. But I didn’t want to romanticize raves, either. Yes, we see people who are high, but the line between drugs and medicine is very thin. And both in the opening sequence of the rave and later, when they dance in the desert or when the father dances in the desert, their bodies give them information.
Noé: Besides, the drugs or plants you mention are psychedelic, not cardiac. They’re post-hippie punks, but they don’t use the usual disco drugs.
Laxe: Indeed, it was a deliberate decision to make the film with people aged 30 to 50. These are the years when people go to live in the countryside, when they leave behind the more self-destructive side of raves and have healed their wounds a little. They are more mature people with a clearer view of things.
Noé: I suppose it’s intentional that the daughter they’re looking for is called Mar [sea] and that they’re going to look for the sea in the desert, which is impossible.
Laxe: Keep in mind that beneath the Sahara is where many of the world’s water pockets are located! It was an ocean in the past. In some version of the script, we did reach the sea—we arrived at [Cap Blanc] Mauritania, where there are monk seals, which is precisely what one of the characters talks about. The thing is, we didn’t have the budget to go to Mauritania. But I’m a filmmaker of beginnings and endings. I’m like an airplane pilot because I take off, and then I have to land. I like the rawness of how the film ends.
Noé: Do you believe in premonitions? Because the ending of the film is foreshadowed in a dream sequence from which Sergi López awakens.
Laxe: Of course, I do. There are foreshadowings in the editing, but we arrived at them in a very unintellectual way. In other words, it was more in the editing that we tested how certain images collided. But, in any case, I believe that nothing is unwritten. In other words, there is no movement of any leaf, of any tree, that does not move for a perfect reason, even if it is sometimes through a storm.
Noé: Yes, because he has a very abstract dream, and the same thing happens at the end of the film.
Laxe: Yes. It was also dangerous to make him into a kind of prophet. We didn’t want to fall into that trap, either. I think we do that several times throughout the film. At the rave, we see a shot of the desert; after Mecca, we see shots of Tonin’s feet walking in the desert. In other words, there are several moments of anticipation. That’s when the film becomes a little less causal and where space and time are a little removed, a bit like in dreams. Space, time and causality in the world of dreams are not questioned.
Noé: You have the presence of something that is more eternal, which is that giant mountain wall. The truth is that the characters look like ants, and the life of the ant hill is insignificant compared to the historical presence of that higher world.
Laxe: Well, I have my Sufi practice, which is based on being a zero in a way, doing that work of ego reduction, self-control. Since I arrived in Morocco, especially in the south, I have been curiously struck by those mountains, which make you witness the creation of the planet. That presence is very violent, Curiously, that feeling of smallness we have in front of such an arid landscape, I think it calms me. I don’t know about you, but that feeling of smallness, I think it’s the natural state of human beings or the healthiest one.
Noé: Yes. Sometimes, it also happens when you’re in the middle of a snowstorm in the mountains, and all you see is white. Everything is white, everything is empty. But I’ve never really been in the desert.
Laxe: The desert is powerful because you feel like you could die there, so all your senses are heightened, and besides, you can’t hide there, you can’t escape. There’s so much emptiness that it’s like seclusion. It forces you to look inside yourself.
Noé: At another point while watching your film, I thought of those films where there’s an astronaut who goes alone to Mars.
Laxe: Yes, in a way, through cinematic stylistic resources, what we have tried to do is make the viewer suspect, when we arrive at that desert, that it is not just a desert. There is a slight suspicion or feeling of strangeness.
Noé: A higher dimension?
Laxe: Yes, whatever it is. Some people have talked to me about the world of the soul; others have talked to me about purgatory, about one of Dante’s circles, about an interzone. There are all kinds of interpretations. I find that place of abstraction interesting.
Noé: A guy who came to see the movie with me today told me it reminded him of “the Zone” in Tarkovsky’s Stalker, where if you turn left or right, there are very dangerous secret codes that must be respected.
Laxe: Yes, Stalker was one of my references. I wanted the desert to be a kind of intelligent zone. I believe that spaces are indeed inhabited and have their rules, and that we must respect those spaces. Sometimes, they are hard on us, but they always try to take care of us. When I was developing this project, the way I sold the film or communicated it within the team was a mixture of Mad Max and Easy Rider. Mad Max is the more physical dimension; the hippies and punks that Easy Rider imagines are the more existentialist part. Finally, Stalker is the more metaphysical part. We worked with these three dimensions, and the music also works in these three dimensions in some way. At first, I was looking for more pyramid-shaped mountains. I wanted the mountain to be a little more personalized, more spiritual, but I couldn’t find anything that was powerful and practical at the same time.
Noé: Yes, but it’s perfect. Have you ever been to Egypt?
Laxe: I’ve never been. I’d like to go.
Noé: Ah, you’ll love it. If you go inside the pyramids and see all the sculptures… it blows my mind that [a] civilization like that could have existed, and today we are where we are.
Laxe: Yes, my next film will be more about ancient civilizations and funerary architecture and so on. I’m very interested in that, and those laser shots evoke a bit of the spiritual geometry of architecture.
Noé: What aspects of Sirāt are closest to your own life?
Laxe: The thing is, when I start a film, I think I’m filming people who are very distant from me, but then I realize I’m looking in a mirror. Deep down, I discovered that I’m a bit of a raver—at least, I share certain scars with them: same social status, type of education, type of detachment, radicalism. I also think that only a raver could have made Sirāt. There’s something about pushing the limits in rave culture that’s a bit like how I approach my film projects. I recognize myself in these people, their desire for transcendence and, sometimes, my inability to achieve it. We are a somewhat mutilated generation. Watching the film, I recognize the desire for adventure and travel. I have something of a traveler in me. As Paul Bowles said, the tourist is the one who, when he travels, is always thinking about home, and the traveler is the one who doesn’t have one. I identify with that—that curiosity to get to know others, to get to know other cultures. And then, it’s about a father who is looking for a stable love and can’t find it. I think that speaks to me, as well. I’m 40 years old, and I’ve had a desire for a family, but I see that, so far, life hasn’t been able to give me that. I see myself a bit like this man who doesn’t quite get it right. Everyone has their own path, and it seems that mine is not that of a family at the moment.
Noé: For the moment. The less you think about it, the better. Are you interested in psychedelic experiences?
Laxe: Oh yes, of course. I’m very interested in them. I was in India last week for a 10-day break with a group that included a psychotherapist, a Sufi, and we asked about the use of psychedelics in therapy, and his answer was very interesting: when you take a plane, it takes you from one airport to another; it doesn’t take you home. I thought that was brilliant. My practice in Sufism was always a little skeptical about the use of psychotropic drugs because it’s considered a bit of a shortcut, and there are natural ways to reach those transcendental states through singing, dancing, trance. But yes, I’m interested in it, and I think my next film is going to go a little bit in that direction. I feel a bit of a calling from the jungle, from the plant.
Noé: What is the film that has fascinated you the most, that you have seen the most in your life? Are there some that you like to watch regularly, like a mantra that you follow?
Laxe: Not particularly, I’m not that much of a film buff. There’s The Naked Island by Kaneto Shindō, a film I see as corresponding quite well with my own spiritual practice of acceptance and detachment, of being a zero. I think the film evokes that quite well. And lately, I’ve been watching Sergei Dvortsevoy’s Highway a lot, which is about a Muslim circus family troupe in Kazakhstan. It’s beautiful. I recommend you watch a film that you can easily find online called The Sufi of Afghanistan by Arnaud Desjardin. It’s a very illustrative film about Sufi culture, but it also has some sequences of dhikr, the Sufi practice for reaching ecstasy, and it’s brutal. The guy was trying to film them in the ’80s and was never able to; they never let him. One day, he was in Paris and got a call from this Sufi monastery in Afghanistan. They told him he could come and film now. He finishes filming and goes to Paris. The Russians entered Afghanistan at that moment and killed them all. These guys really know how to foreshadow the world.
Noé: Speaking of empty spaces and parallel worlds, have you seen a documentary made by Werner Herzog about the South Pole?
Laxe: Is it The Wild Blue Yonder?
Noé: No, Encounters at the End of the World. There’s In it, a diver goes through a hole under the ice, and there’s a whole parallel world with prehistoric monsters underneath. It shows that in our own present world there’s another alien world of creepy creatures, molecules and giant bacterias, and that’s the original world.
Laxe: These images are also used in a [Herzog] film called The Wild Blue Yonder, which mixes images filmed at the South Pole of these animals, strange jellyfish and other creatures, with images of space from NASA, and it’s brutal. Underwater, everything is like another space-time. Everything moves at a different speed, and he approaches that mystery of the universe in which we have our role, but we are not alone.
Noé: Yes, it’s unclear whether it’s the past or the future. Have you ever made documentaries?
Laxe: Yes, I come from a documentary background. I didn’t go to film school because there was no money at home. I got my degree and then, as soon as I finished, bought a 16mm Bolex and started making films on my own. I was just filming reality in a slightly artistic way—doing a lot of portraiture, filming people—and, little by little, my films became more complex. My first film, You All Are Captains, resembles a documentary a bit even though I don’t really believe in the notion of the documentary. I think it’s a lie, that it’s just another form of fiction. But I’ve always been very interested in the textures of reality. I know that cinema is the art of lying, and there’s no need to be attached to reality in order to generate truth. But, I don’t know, there’s something about the truth that I like. For example, this rave could have been filmed with extras. We could have generated much more trance and strangeness. But, there’s something about reality that attracts me, and I like people’s faces. In Fire Will Come, I’m interested in the work of firefighters, how they work. To be consistent and rigorous with the symbolic universes I film, whether they are firefighters, or Sufi or ravers, there must be rigor.
Noé: I’m guessing your actors in Sirāt are all ravers who hadn’t acted before and that the only actor was Sergi López?
Laxe: The child had participated in a series. Bringing a minor to a rave that was being filmed was very delicate. We had the parents’ consent, and I think everyone at the rave was very generous, too.
Noé: The film also has something of a Western feel to it, like those Westerns where white people end up in a tribe with Indians and initiate the child. The trucks also look like caravans.
Laxe: That’s true, but the thing is, it bothers me to call it a Western. I think in my case, it’s more of an Eastern because they go east—a metaphysical east. The Western draws on stories of heroes found in all traditions, where the hero, through his triumphant death, opens the doors to eternity. That’s the archetype: the triumphant death that has since been trivialized through mainstream popular culture and has lost that essence [of] that spiritual knight who defends his values above his ego and, thanks to them, becomes eternal. That’s what I wanted to evoke with the film. [Because] death is something that shapes my psychology and limits me, that takes away my freedom, I needed to experience death—[because] it is something that does not surround me, and to see it—by making this film.
Noé: Have you ever had a near-death experience?
Laxe: Never. That’s why I made Sirāt.
