Meshes of the Afternoon

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

The IMDB summary of this film states that it's about "A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams..." Well, that might be one interpretation but I'm sure you could show this film to a hundred people and get a hundred different replies as to what it was about. This avant-garde film from Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid has become one of the most popular of its type and it's easy to see why.

If you're a fan of Luis Bunuel's UN CHIEN ANDALOU then you'll certainly want to check this out as there are some very bizarre and surreal images on display. There's no doubt that the highlight for me was the women in black who creepily walks around and then when you see the face, well, I'm not going to ruin it but it's a powerful effect. The film works perfectly as a mix between reality and a dream world and there's no question that you never know which one that you're in.

The film was certainly very well-made and the images are striking throughout. The cinematography is a major plus but so was the timing of the editing. MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON is a very beautiful little gem and one of the most surreal as well.

'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.

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.

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.