At Land

At Land is first and foremost a dream projection. Meaning that, while if it's either surreal or not, what we see is a not the narration of a dream or even the interpretation of a dream; it's the shared experience of a dream. Like, in dreams, you change from one location to another, or the person you are talking to suddenly become somebody else, or a Walt Disney look alike in a bed may be creepy, without any logical reaction to the strange nature of it because while you are dreaming you are just experiencing it, not trying to understand it. I strongly suggest that with this film, in fact, most of Deren's films, to let got to the rational function of "understanding" and just flow with it.

I don't think that most of Lynch or Buñuel's films are really onirical, maybe they are surrealistic on an absourdist level or rich on Jungian symbolism, but in the end, they have a basic narrative structure and usually bring a closure to whatever the film is about. Maya Deren's At Land is not based on rethorical figures or a discernible point; I don't even think there is no explicit symbolism to it (maybe Deren has explained it in some essay, but I haven't read her yet). It's experiencing the whole thing as if we are in Deren's head while she is dreaming. Of course, this implies the alienation of most viewers who may be in need of closure. Few films are successful as shared dreams, Malle's Black Moon or Jean Cocteau's Blood of a Poet come to mind.

Comercially, Kubrick tried and achieved to some extend the share dream with Wide Eyes Shut, but it's only last year's blockbuster Inception the one which has nailed it. Of all the references that are to be found about the excellent Inception, At Land it's the most clear influence, from the beach opening to the dream experience to the search of the totem and getting back to the first "dream layer".

So, even 60 years and something later, Deren is still a truly influential filmmaker

Very provocative to discover, again, the vision of Maya Deren . Because not the story - in few scenes, maybe too personal - less coherent or just the surrealism defining scenes but the image is the significant one.

The step from a reality to other, the cheess game and the high interest for the pawn , the trick to keep it from the ladies on beach , the walk near man at different ages and the closed door of house.

And, sure, Maya Deren , a seductive story herself grace apparence.

The reference to Alice in Wonderland, like the games of seduction as good points for me of this experimental short film.

There's less of the symbolic to grapple with in AT LAND compared to Maya Deren's MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, although there's probably a good deal to analyze, if you're so inclined, about a woman looking for a chess pawn, then clutching it to her chest and running on a beach as her other selves look curiously at her. Less jarring (although Maya Deren does walk in on her own POV shot at one point!), more linear and sure of itself, this is almost the Lucifer Rising to Meshes' Invocation of my Demon Brother (to bring Kenneth Anger into the fold). Whereas Meshes had a syncopated, almost nervous quality about it, AT LAND is more lyrical, still dreamlike in atmosphere, but exchanging cramped apartments, hooded figures and knives for open beach spaces, giant scaffolds, and games of chess. I won't presume to know what it all means, and like Meshes, I suspect I would find the answer infinitely less satisfying or intriguing than the question itself but lovers of the avant-guard will find a lot to like.

After the claustrophobic feminist nightmare of her first film 'Meshes of the Afternoon' Ukrainian/American experimental film-maker Maya Deren made this mesmerising, bewildering, and strangely reassuring short which continues to expand upon her interest in the rhythmic potentialities of the camera as well as the representation of dream-like states that challenge traditional narrative conventions. Indeed, despite being largely stripped of the Freudian symbology which figured so prominently (some may say conspicuously) in 'Meshes…', 'At Land' is arguably more dream-like than its illustrious predecessor through its use of clever editing which matches physical movements of the lead character (Deren) from shot to shot but against different physical backdrops to create a vivid, authentic representation of a subjective inner realm.

In addition to this technique, which she would also use beautifully in her next film 'A study in Choreography for Camera', the theme of the multiple-Mayas used in 'Meshes…' reoccurs. However, while in 'Meshes…' it was created using multiple exposures of the camera film to allow the different aspects of Maya to share the same space around the kitchen table, in 'At Land' the effect is achieved through a series of eye-line matches from each of the freshly manifested Mayas as she runs along the beach triumphantly.

The film also differs from 'Meshes…' in that it is almost completely set outside and begins with Deren washing up / being born on a beach, the waves of which then roll backwards into the sea. It is a characteristic feature of Deren's films to use simple camera effects to reveal hidden worlds of motion and latent artistic possibilities in things which our everyday eye often misses. Indeed, the composition of shots in 'At Land' is incredibly aesthetic and, even though she was avowedly not a surrealist, as she wanders the dunes and stony caverns the film certainly recalls a Dali painting to the point that the inclusion of a melting clock would not feel out of place.

Deren herself stated that the film is meant to represent a form of spiritual odyssey and an individuals struggle to maintain personal identity, however I must confess my shortcomings and admit that I didn't get that from the film…if anything, for me the film was the very opposite: a reappraisal of splintered selfhood as curiously liberating. This difference of interpretation doesn't bother me though as I've always agreed with Oscar Wilde's opinion that "diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital", and certainly, while being made in 1944 disqualifies it from being labelled "new", Deren's work in general, and 'At Land' in particular, is definitely complex, and undeniably vital.

A woman lies on the sand, left there by the tides and waves (and in a pose that would be copied in From Here to Eternity). She reaches up across tree roots and makes a difficult climb. Only to discover herself climbing horizontally along a long dinner table as bourgeoise black-tie guests chat and drink and smoke, oblivious to her. At the top of the table, a man is playing chess but abandons the game. Fascinated, she gazes at board, the pieces moving unaided. The woman chases a pawn as it falls to the floor. Falls down a waterfall. Is lost.

She meets a man on a path through a forest. They chat and go to a big house - at his suggestion - where the furniture is covered with white shrouds, as if no-one lives there. (The inside of the house is quite grand, although from outside it is a mere wooden shack). She stares at an older man lying under a white sheet.

The woman descends the cliffs to the sand dunes and the beach. Two women are playing a relaxed chess and having a good time. She caresses their hair seductively. They play without needing to look at the board. The woman then takes a pawn and runs across the dunes, triumphantly recalling earlier scenes but leaving only footprints in the sand. Maya Deren's second short film is perhaps the only one to resemble her more famous Meshes of the Afternoon in terms of structure and style.

While both experimental films have a surrealist narrative that is suggestive rather than literal, the oppressive, frightening tone of Meshes is here replaced with one of joyous discovery. In Lacanian terminology, it celebrates a healthy return to an inner essence. In this it is almost the reverse of the psychotic nightmare of Meshes. It has also been seen as one first films addressing feminine subjectivity, although an anti-materialist reading would be equally possible (Deren had also been a left-wing political activist in the thirties).

In her classic text, Cinematography: the Creative Use of Reality, Deren says, "In my At Land, it has been the technique by which the dynamic of the Odyssey is reversed and the protagonist, instead of undertaking the long voyage of search for adventure, finds instead that the universe itself has usurped the dynamic action which was once the prerogative of human will, and confronts her with a volatile and relentless metamorphosis in which her personal identity is the sole constancy."

Cinematically, the unmatched shots also create a sense of disorientation in time and space. The viewer is forced to form their own 'story' or 'meaning' according to her or his own ingenium. The use of surreal structure for Deren was not so much an artistic preference as a belief that cinema needs to find its own instrument as an art form, to relinquish its reliance on, "narrative disciplines it has borrowed from literature," and its, "timid imitation of the causal logic of narrative plots."

The fact that At Land works so well reminds us that Meshes was no accident: Deren understood the way symbols are used by the subconscious well enough to elicit direct, meaningful responses in an audience. Sadly for cinephiles, Deren mostly moved back to her other love, that of the dance, in her use of film thereafter. Yet it is particularly her two early surrealist classics that continue to provide inspiration to viewers and filmmakers alike, such that she is still often referred to as the 'Mother of U.S.-Avant-Garde.' She developed a new vocabulary of film images and a new syntax of film techniques. Things she continued to strive for and lecture on until the end of her tragically short life.