Armageddon Time

Originally published on 16/11/22 on Letterboxd

Have never really seen anything that reflects my childhood to the extent that this did- the unimaginable terror that a locked door can conjure in the mind of a child, the inability to understand why someone's voice quivers when they tell you they're going away for a while, the disassociation with one's very being that occurs when everyone around you chants a slogan you’ve only ever known as a harbinger of doom.

The formal conduits through which it translates this terror are, at least upon first glance, less immediately impressive than in the rest of Gray's oeuvre, but by the third act it becomes immediately apparent that the seeming verisimilitude to Gray's past is deceptive, in that it conceals the fluidity of its spaces as constructions stemming from the mind of a child, trying to fit the unflinching brutality of the present with the desire to be embraced and have someone tell you that everything's going to be alright- even when you know war's on its way.