The Sacred Spirit is a movie that seems to have emerged from the doleful mind of someone whose artistic temperament rattles and hums on a frequency tuned to some astral body or alien wavelength. The director, Chema Garcia iBarra is working on honing what looks to be one of the cinema’s most exciting and novel new voices. His style, as it is plied in his 2021 feature isn’t mere artistic expression but feels more akin to alchemy.
Falling Under the Spell
It’s a deliberate and chary film that presents and unfolds its streaming narrative without cause or measure for convention without tending toward self-conscious avoidance. iBarra‘s directing sensibilities feel like he’s in touch with something otherworldly, and watching his film is like receiving transmissions from a subconscious entity.
The story takes shape as we’re introduced to various members of this uncanny family who seem comfortably rested in the sunny city of Elche, Spain (the director’s stomping grounds), where a young girl Veronica (Llum Arques) recounts a class presentation about organ trafficking amongst devil worshippers. It’s oddly morbid and amusing in a perversely pranksterish way.
Leaning Into the Unknown
As we get closer, the film establishes not only its tone but a feel for the characters and the type of clean but sickly, a hazy atmosphere that permeates the subsequent feature. While Veronica seems like a relatively well-adjusted kid, we learn that her twin sister is recently abducted. Her mother is routinely on the local news networks pleading for information to find her daughter.
This event leaves young Veronica in the care of her infirmed grandmother Charo (Joanna Valverde), who was once a noted clairvoyant but is largely mute with advancing Alzheimers, and her uncle Jose Manuel played with chilling resonance by the non-professional Nacho Fernandez. Their place, as well as the cafe that Jose runs, is festooned with Egyptian iconography as well as new age adornments and spiritual bric-a-brac, to the point where you know this is well beyond a casual interest but an all-consuming fascination.
Jose frequents meetings with his ufology group, and their hazy-eyed dedication and power of belief are leagues beyond the average X-Files fan club skywatcher; these are people with conviction and faith. You can’t put your finger on it, but iBarra possesses this uncanny penchant to communicate feelings of distressing otherness without a hint of judgment or disdain for his characters. This heady veil of aesthetic conjuring is the secret ingredient in this subtly dazzling movie.
Deciphering the Runes
There’s this unhealthy tension cooking throughout; its story and iBarra‘s eye for detail presents us with a healthy inquiry regarding the corrosive elements of faith and corrupt fringes of ideology. Furthermore, there’s a plainspoken intelligence to the delivery. Information is conveyed through the television, radio, and casual conversations; it’s quietly menacing, but it’s telling us something we can’t help but lean in and decipher. This ostensible static method will cast a spell on you.
Despite the sunny streets and brightly colored mystical regalia that frequently adorns the screen, there are recurring discussions of organ harvesting, marauding immigrants of kidnappers, and outsiders who won’t hesitate to pluck out an eye for the black market. It’s that classical tribalist fear of outsiders, and there’s enough on screen to sell us on the urgency of fear. Occasionally, a cryptic lone woman with an eye patch appears as if some kind of silent, haunting totem.
The Journey and What’s to Come…
The Sacred Spirit hooks you with its moody, deceptively elusive presentation; iBarra might seem like he’s prone to a gesture-oriented, slow-burning style but his film is articulate, brilliantly structured with a tactful eye for detail and a natural thirst for curious ambiance. With such a bewitching debut what’s on the horizon for this distinctive filmmaker?
Have you seen The Sacred Spirit? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!
Watch The Sacred Spirit
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