“I wanted to make a movie on death” director Oliver Laxe said in an interview with the New York Times — and he made it.
Cinematheque, a University of Wisconsin affiliated screening program dedicates itself to brining what it perceives as out-of-reach historical international and fine films to Madison.
Cinematheque choose to begin its Spring semester with the screening of Oliver Laxe’s movie on death, “Sirat.” The theater closed its doors in advance to a full house.
“Sirat” begins with a 10-minute rave scene in a desert to a hypnotic, electronic and techno music piece composed by French musician Kangding Ray. Ray produced the track specially for the drama film.
Through the hypnotic dancing and engaging rave, a father and son search for their missing daughter. The rave comes to an untimely end when an unknown war breaks out, forcing military intervention in the desert.
The movie continues as a quest in search for the daughter, as the father and son coalesce with a group of ravers and make their way through the war-infected desert landscape against military orders. But, the quest is never completed. The daughter is not discovered. The quest is abandoned when its protagonists exhausted by grief fight for their own survival.
The beginning scene with its music transcribes to the viewer not only a film landscape but a mental state. An unsettling yet oddly captivating state of mind. “Sirat” was nominated in the 98th Academy Awards for Best Sound and also Best International Feature Film.
The movie explores death and humanity’s bitter interaction with it. Death is portrayed as a blasé creature to human suffering imposing itself on humanity without meaning or purpose. It is motivated by no afflatus and instead, by impetuous chaos.
The audience is thrust into a harrowing two-hour journey as the film proceeds. It traces human frailty and its exposure to chaos and death created by what we perceive as insignificant actions and grand decisions.
Death is the inevitable consequence of human existence to which we subscribe on birth. “Sirat” makes this alarmingly clear and stands as a brutal meditation on mortality.
“Sirat” won the 78th Cannes Film Festival’s Jury Prize and, on Thursday, approval of Cinematique’s audience.
