Crack, Brutal Grief

The memory of a nearly perfect evening.

"Inspired by the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, Louis Zukofsky and Ezra Pound ... Elder's latest film .. is a visually lush collage," and "ironic attempt to construct a Divine Comedy for modern times." Jim Shedden

"Elder's most philosophical film ... subtly woven connections ... proceed under a contemplative regime" that "solicits the memories of the whole cycle in more delicate ways." Bart Testa

Like Ezekiel's vision in the valley of the dry bones, a typos of a new beginning. In among all the feelings of loss and deprivation there occur intimations of final culbute général, of the dissolution of time, of a now that vanishes between the no long and the not yet.

The optical manipulation of tone, shape, line and movement creates a purely cinematic choreography.

The confrontation with death and finitude....Death animates the sense of the intimacy of life whose measureless flow is a danger to the stability of things. (RBE)

"A beatific vision of the imaginary landscape of paradise, inspired by the poetry of ... Blake." Pacific Cinematheque

"Behold, I show you a mystery. Not everyone shall sleep, but everyone shall be changed."

Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World belongs to a 35-hour film cycle, The Book of All the Dead, which comprises the bulk of Toronto-based Bruce Elder’s filmmaking from 1975 to 1994. In ancient Egyptian culture, the Book of the Dead consisted of religious texts intended to help preserve the spirit of the departed in the afterlife — but in Elder’s reading, that comforting idea of continuity takes on a rather darker cast. Lamentations is comprised of a complex audio and visual patchwork: a philosophical meditation superimposed as text throughout the film; vignettes featuring a comical but disturbing Franz Liszt, a debate between Isaac Newton and George Berkeley, an angry, deranged man in an alley, and an arrogant psychiatrist; and a final search for salvation in the forests of British Columbia, the American Southwest, and Mexico’s Yucatan.

Elder depicts forms of life that have grown increasingly out of touch with the body, and attempts to elicit and experience of the delight that results from reconnecting with our natural being

"Elder's most philosophical film ... subtly woven connections ... proceed under a contemplative regime" that "solicits the memories of the whole cycle in more delicate ways." Bart Testa

"Elder's most philosophical film ... subtly woven connections ... proceed under a contemplative regime" that "solicits the memories of the whole cycle in more delicate ways." Bart Testa

"a revelation of the editing process ... done with remarkable care and precision ... The interrelationship between moving body and moving camera is heightened to the intensity of a struggle." Joyce Nelson