If Chicago’s film culture were more sensible, Oliver Laxe’s rapturously beautiful second feature, Mimosas, wouldn’t be playing at Facets Multimedia (where it screens for two more nights), but on every IMAX screen in the city. The chief pleasure of Laxe’s film is how it makes use of monumental locations in Morocco, setting the story against the grand splendors of mountains and wide-open deserts. The story of Mimosas is relatively simple, but the landscapes give it an epic sweep; they also make the story seem to exist outside of time, the eternal majesty of the setting overwhelming any momentary concerns. The imagery in Mimosas will be familiar to anyone who saw Ben Rivers’s experimental feature The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, which played in Chicago last year. That movie began as a moody making-of documentary about Mimosas before branching off into its own strange territory, telling a nightmarish story in which Laxe gets kidnapped by desert nomads who force him to be their jester. (Come to think of it, The Sky Trembles would look great on an IMAX screen too.) Mimosas elucidates some of the more elusive ideas of Rivers’s film while standing firmly on its own feet. It really should have screened in Chicago first, but considering how good both films are, this is a minor complaint.
Mimosas differs from classic Hollywood cinema in its prevalence of wide shots and its emphasis on Islamic spiritualism. That thematic concern carries over to the very feel of the film, which often seems to exude a spiritual force. The landscapes convey the powerful mystery of existence, which the characters respect through their religious devotion. Moreover, Laxe renders modern culture mysterious through his use of ambient music and narrative ellipses. As in Rivers’s companion film, some of the most powerful shots of Mimosas are of taxicabs driving through a desert—a compelling image of civilization imposed on a landscape that seems to reject the presence of humans. The triumph of Laxe’s film is that it inspires a sense of awe with regards to nature and civilization alike.
