Meshes of the Afternoon

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.

'Meshes of the Afternoon' is the first and best-known film of experimental film-maker Maya Deren, whose surrealist tinged movies explore time, space, self, and society and have had a lasting influence on American cinema. 'Meshes…' begins with a hand reaching down, as if from Heaven, leaving a flower on a pathway which a woman (Deren) picks up on her way to her house. When she arrives she ascends some stairs, gets her key out, unlocks the door and enters the house. Already an ominous absence is present, and a subsequent tour of the house shows us a bread-knife, a telephone off the hook, and up another flight of stairs we see an empty bed. After the woman falls asleep, these domestic objects' double life as Freudian symbols is revealed and charged with increasing potency with each repetition of the cyclical narrative until the films catastrophic denouement.

In using Freudian symbology and a cyclical narrative, 'Meshes…' certainly has a dream logic which is reminiscent of surrealist films likes Cocteau's 'Blood of a Poet' as well as Dali and Bunuel's 'Un Chien Andalou'. However, Deren actively rejected the "Surrealist" tag and the difference between 'Meshes' and these seminal surrealist works is marked. Firstly, despite the repeating narrative, objects suddenly transforming into something else, and a lead character that splinters into four, the dramatic structure of 'Meshes…' is quite tight and even though the viewer is challenged in regard to interpretation it struck me as quite straightforward compared to some of her later films. Secondly, the dreamscape of 'Meshes…' is not a celebratory realm liberated from reason, but rather a more claustrophobic and sombre world inhabited by a Grim-Reaper like image with a mirrored face, and the splintered identities of the protagonist who at one point congregate around the kitchen table.

Since it was made, the film has had an immense impact both cinematically (in inspiring a new generation of film-makers to pick up the camera) and culturally given that the most favoured interpretation is that it is a feminist commentary on gender identity and sexual politics in an era when the role of women was changing dramatically. One might think that, in an era when David Lynch is mainstream and woman are arguably liberated, 'Meshes…' would feel dated. However, this is not the case, and remains fresh and engaging to a modern viewer in addition to its (deserved) status as a fascinating and influential piece of early experimental film.

Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" is an amazing 15 minute journey into the subconscious. It's like "Un Chien Andalou" seen through the eyes of a woman. In the film it's hard to tell when Maya's character is awake or dreaming. This film is chock full of bizarre and creepy surrealist images. The protagonist drops her key and it bounces like a ball. A knife moves from a loaf of bread, then the key turns into a knife. She carries a flower with her, which she holds upside down. She sees death, who where's a black hood and has a mirror for a face. She see's herself dreaming. In her dream she seems to foresee her own death. Deren seems to have a subconscious fear of knives, or being killed by a knife. This is one crazy little short film that almost puts you in a hypnotic trance with it's creepy Avant-Gard sounds and images. It's very poetic and disturbing, as nothing is what it seems. This is a must see for fans of David Lynch and Bunuel.

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.

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.