Fragments from Heaven review – Malick-esque origins of life study looks to the skies

A meteor shower is the central mystery of a documentary set in the Moroccan desert that feels like a cinematic sleeping pill

Here is an arthouse documentary from Morocco that moves at geological speed, demanding every single last shred of your attention. It's a cinematic essay about the origins of human life, but for me many of the scenes felt too opaque and ponderous to really dig into the ideas.

It begins in the bleak emptiness of the Moroccan desert, where a nomad shepherd called Mohamed describes watching a meteor shower: blue fire lighting up the sky followed by a noise so loud people thought it was an earthquake; the ground beneath him trembled. Mohamed lives in a tent with his family, but his way of life is disappearing. The land is so dry (presumably as a result of climate change) that there is not enough grass for sheep to graze. So Mohamed joins men looking for the debris from the meteorite shower. Director Adnane Baraka uses a contrived technique of having Mohamed and his family speak their innermost thoughts and feelings to each other in a whispery voiceover, like a Terrence Malick movie.