Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World
Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World
| 10 October 1985 (USA)
Lamentations: A Monument for the Dead World Trailers

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.

Reviews
Mabel Munoz

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

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Neive Bellamy

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

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Guillelmina

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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Phillipa

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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