Sirāt

And Movies about Men

Kathleen Norris on DESERT HOSPITALITY

Sirāt is an astonishing and unforgettable film. The word sirāt is an Arabic term meaning a way, a path, and also the bridge between heaven and hell. We are warned at the film’s outset that this bridge is both narrow and razor-sharp, and the movie more than fulfills that definition. The film is also a powerful reminder of the way that film can bring us into a world we may know little about — in this case that of the techno-nomads who go from rave to rave in the Moroccan desert - and make us realize that we’re on familiar ground after all. Human compassion, which might be considered the star of this film, knows no boundaries. And we learn that a rag-tag group of tattooed, fierce-looking punk ravers might be just the people we need to provide it.

The film opens with people setting up huge amplifiers for a rave, and I laughed when I saw that they were placed in front of the most spectacular massif I have ever seen, an enormous cliff wall of red rock. Its strata speaks of many thousands of years of geologic time, making the human beings partying in front of them seem comically small. For this film’s first fifteen minutes there is no dialogue, just a persistent electronic beat and a view of people dancing to it, moving spasmodically, as if in a trance, each in his or her own world. I thought, uncharitably, if this movie did nothing else for me, it would convince me to never attend a rave. Thankfully, I was in for a surprise.