26/04/2025
The Latin palindrome, “in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni,” cuts into the heart of R. Bruce Elder's Crack, Brutal Grief - at night we go down into the gyre and are consumed by fire. In the video essay on the disc, I described this lyric as "a declaration of the collective march into misery that is conducted in the dark night of the Internet." This is a harrowing collage, a harrowing of the hell that is the Internet - such as it was, such as it would become. In that same video essay, I offer the argument that this is a mondo film - the most personal of mondo films, full of that familiar mixture of real terror and dramatic artifice (from proto-FailArmy clips to scenes from Class of Nuke 'Em High and Doppelganger). Do you love Faces of Death and Mondo Cane, but you're looking for something that will make your heart ache a little more, or that will challenge your eyes with its abstractions, like an optical illusion puzzle? Give this film a shot.
A common response to this disc among our customers has been that they cannot recommend the experience because of how hard it goes, how confrontational and traumatic and despairing it is, and yet, many have said that it has given them an unforgettable experience. Like John Hofsess's Palace of Pleasure, it is a psychotherapeutic experience - the exorcism that comes in a confrontation with grief. You may not be healed by it - but ye shall be changed.
Buy it today at www.blackzero.ca.
