Spanish | Eavesdropping at the Movies

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Sirât is all about tone, and the time it takes to establish it. It begins with an array of massive speakers being set up in a desert, and over the next several minutes, we experience an outdoor rave, the music trance-inducing, the ravers moving freely and in their own worlds, as we gradually narrow our focus on an out-of-place father, Luis, and his young son, who we learn are searching for his daughter, last seen five months ago. Failing to find her there, Luis latches on to the mention of another, upcoming rave, and, while war breaks out in the background, uncertainly follows a group of ravers there.

It’s possible to spoil Sirât severely – some of what occurs is barely signposted and hard to believe, but just as we’re told about the music that underscores everything, this is a film for dancing to, not listening to. It would be all too easy to watch Sirât at a remove and find the events depicted ludicrous and laughable, but director Óliver Laxe demonstrates such control of tone that it’s easy to be lured into the emotional state he needs to shock us when he wants. The only thing you should be prepared to expect is a lack of easy answers. Sirât is a film about a world coming apart that leaves you wondering what it’s all for.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

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José gives Mike a history lesson on the Spanish Civil War, the scars it left on Spanish culture and society, and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s own relationship to it and the dictatorship to which it led, under which he grew up and which fell in the few years prior to his ascent to prominence. His new film, Parallel Mothers, inspires this review of the past, embroiled as it is in confronting Spain’s modern history and, José argues, adapting elements of it to the melodrama of motherhood that forms its primary plot – a plot which is used to explore questions of lies, psychic violence, and instrumentality that are part of the film’s critique of Spain’s Pact of Forgetting, its political and cultural agreement to avoid confronting the legacy of the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship, which the itch to scratch historical memory is seen to disturb.

It’s a film with serious flaws, and a disappointment given Almodóvar’s estimable body of work, especially the masterpiece that was his most recent film, Pain and Glory, but a film that creates this kind of discourse is to be valued. It’s pat, one-dimensional, and with a leadenness of tone that isn’t typical of Almodóvar, whose sense of humour is usually so reliable – but still worth seeing.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies

Tag Archives: Spanish

472 – Sirât

339 – Parallel Mothers