Meshes of the Afternoon

The networks of a mind, who really knows when it reclined, started to consume and dine, before untangling what's been; a head of conjuring confusion, a state of light refract diffusion, with a knife to cut illusion, and a key to lock fate in; as it gazes into cycles, that deceive the daylight vitals, and revisits past disciples, replicas queue to begin; like a self-devouring snake, you can't be sure who is awake, if they want to pull the brake, and find a way to stop the spin.

Those moments of drift, that consume and confuse, as the world wraps around, and the visions all infuse, take you to abstract illusions, to unsettled taut contusions, are they dreams or just intrusions, that play out throughout a snooze.

A woman enters her domicile with lots of shots of her nice manicured feet as she witnesses a knife, vertigo, a shrouded phantom with a face of glass, a strange man, the sea, falling asleep in her couch, sensual arousal, etc., as dream and reality blur into a finale of tragedy and summation. Shot in black and white this is one of the better and successful shorts from the wartime period that touches on Freudian immersions with a storytelling flair for drama and enigma. Maya Deren's most noted artistic effort the film assured her place among experimental female directors and is an interesting historical artifact in avant-garde cinema.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is a 14 minute short film directed by Maya Daren, who also stars as the film's lead. It is a surreal horror movie that tells the story of a woman who comes across a flower, deliberately laid in her path by a hooded figure. She takes the flower home with her and smells it, breathing in its poisonous aroma. The unnamed woman then falls asleep and starts to experience vivid dreams that may just well be reality. Who was the person who gave her this flower? What was their motive? This short film is one of the best short films I have personally seen up to now. It was creepy and the imagery was, at times, terrifying. I'll definitely be watching more of Maya Deren's filmography.

While the opening sequence of a woman following a faceless figure with a flower is persistently repeated, images of key and knife intensify their vividness, and then dream and reality permeate into each other's realms. Maya Deren's first and probably best film, Meshes of the Afternoon, is an amalgam of traditional narrative and European-imported surrealism. It is also one of many triumphs in the film history that fearlessness and youthfulness conquer the lack of expenses and experiences.

Like "Un Chien Andalou" by Bunuel & Dali, "Meshes" might appear to hold some psychological symbolism, dream imagery, hidden significances or inside jokes. Where Bunuel & Dali insisted that all they filmed was to make "no sense at all," Deren's could have a hidden commentary on the woman's role in the home; time spent alone, to be drawn out is to fall deeper into oneself. The overall look of the film (shot over several years) is one of a camera experiment; one which carries the viewer scene to scene via strange footfalls on shifting soils, stairs, paths and floors. The sense of continuity is held through reoccurring imagery, and this film uses a mask to give the appearance of multiple Mayas at a table VERY effectively. Some of the stop-action (disappearing/reappearing objects) is rough, given the complexity of her camera, but given these limitations the film is a technical feat as well. Mesmerizing, re-watchable.