Directors: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid
Writer: Maya Deren
Photography: Alexander Hammid
Editor: Maya Deren
Cast: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid
I warmed up for writing about this 14-minute experimental film by looking at the 103-minute 2002 documentary In the Mirror of Maya Deren. I had seen Meshes of the Afternoon previously, via youtube videos of varying quality with and without a soundtrack, and not had much patience for it. I particularly did not like the nun-like figure with a mirror for a face, which reminded me too much of Luis Bunuel and his work, notably Un Chien Andalou, although it is L'Age d'Or where he really starts getting carried away with nuns. And it’s not really exactly a nun here anyway, but never mind. In the Mirror covers all of Deren’s abbreviated career (she died in 1961 at the age of 44) and her six or so movies. Deren was another beneficiary of last year’s Sight & Sound poll, ultimately elevating Meshes of the Afternoon from #277 on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? up to #99, though she does not appear again in the list of 1,000. I suspect other pictures by her may be better, but Meshes also has depths that are remarkable for a little 14-minute cinema play. In fairness, it is merely her very first film whereas especially the footage she shot in Haiti, clips seen in In the Mirror, looks more interesting to me. I thus still had some bias against Meshes of the Afternoon going in again. Then I had a hard time getting comfortable at first with the “intentional silence,” enforced by Deren with intentional markers of sound such as a record-player playing a record. But I came to like it for that, especially when I peeked in on a youtube version with music. Meshes is mostly a dream story, and the dream stories we have at night after all are mostly silent. Meshes is rooted in feminist anxiety, if I’m reading it right, but with its own internal logic as dream narrative more or less, with potent symbols and/or artifacts of the mundane day—the flower, the key, the knife.
It has the inexplicable physical forces and dislocations of dreams too when the dreamer within the dream (Deren) is blown down a staircase, and later when she is edited down and up the same staircase after an unsettling encounter. It is randomly erotic. There is a lot of clarity to how the scenes are staged and shot, and the use of repetition is skillful. Even so, for all the force of Deren’s vision, it often feels much like what it is, some fooling around with a motion-picture camera in the glintingly bright sunshine and etched shadows of California, albeit at the same time admittedly visionary somehow. I found the more I looked at Meshes the better it seemed to get. I have some trouble, I must admit, adjusting to such a purely visual experience as this little 14-minute workout delivers. All of Deren’s films are on youtube, as far as I could see, even a 52-minute 1985 documentary which appears to be the only way to see her Haiti footage. It’s called Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, put together by Cherel and Teiji Ito, finally released eight years later. Teiji Ito was Deren’s second husband, 18 years her junior, married when they were 43 and 25. The youtube video is typically frustrating, with burnt-in Spanish (Portuguese?) subtitles and footage obviously decayed by iterations of duplication. But Deren’s seeming rapport and intimacy with these Haitians gave her amazing access to some remarkable rituals and wonderful, mesmerizing music and dance, which generally come through fine. Voiceovers by John Genke and Joan Pape provide some useful information when they are not sounding like educational films for classrooms. Maya Deren—start with Meshes of the Afternoon, I suppose, fair enough, and then proceed.
I warmed up for writing about this 14-minute experimental film by looking at the 103-minute 2002 documentary In the Mirror of Maya Deren. I had seen Meshes of the Afternoon previously, via youtube videos of varying quality with and without a soundtrack, and not had much patience for it. I particularly did not like the nun-like figure with a mirror for a face, which reminded me too much of Luis Bunuel and his work, notably Un Chien Andalou, although it is L'Age d'Or where he really starts getting carried away with nuns. And it’s not really exactly a nun here anyway, but never mind. In the Mirror covers all of Deren’s abbreviated career (she died in 1961 at the age of 44) and her six or so movies. Deren was another beneficiary of last year’s Sight & Sound poll, ultimately elevating Meshes of the Afternoon from #277 on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? up to #99, though she does not appear again in the list of 1,000. I suspect other pictures by her may be better, but Meshes also has depths that are remarkable for a little 14-minute cinema play. In fairness, it is merely her very first film whereas especially the footage she shot in Haiti, clips seen in In the Mirror, looks more interesting to me. I thus still had some bias against Meshes of the Afternoon going in again. Then I had a hard time getting comfortable at first with the “intentional silence,” enforced by Deren with intentional markers of sound such as a record-player playing a record. But I came to like it for that, especially when I peeked in on a youtube version with music. Meshes is mostly a dream story, and the dream stories we have at night after all are mostly silent. Meshes is rooted in feminist anxiety, if I’m reading it right, but with its own internal logic as dream narrative more or less, with potent symbols and/or artifacts of the mundane day—the flower, the key, the knife.
It has the inexplicable physical forces and dislocations of dreams too when the dreamer within the dream (Deren) is blown down a staircase, and later when she is edited down and up the same staircase after an unsettling encounter. It is randomly erotic. There is a lot of clarity to how the scenes are staged and shot, and the use of repetition is skillful. Even so, for all the force of Deren’s vision, it often feels much like what it is, some fooling around with a motion-picture camera in the glintingly bright sunshine and etched shadows of California, albeit at the same time admittedly visionary somehow. I found the more I looked at Meshes the better it seemed to get. I have some trouble, I must admit, adjusting to such a purely visual experience as this little 14-minute workout delivers. All of Deren’s films are on youtube, as far as I could see, even a 52-minute 1985 documentary which appears to be the only way to see her Haiti footage. It’s called Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, put together by Cherel and Teiji Ito, finally released eight years later. Teiji Ito was Deren’s second husband, 18 years her junior, married when they were 43 and 25. The youtube video is typically frustrating, with burnt-in Spanish (Portuguese?) subtitles and footage obviously decayed by iterations of duplication. But Deren’s seeming rapport and intimacy with these Haitians gave her amazing access to some remarkable rituals and wonderful, mesmerizing music and dance, which generally come through fine. Voiceovers by John Genke and Joan Pape provide some useful information when they are not sounding like educational films for classrooms. Maya Deren—start with Meshes of the Afternoon, I suppose, fair enough, and then proceed.
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