SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

He_who_lurks Maya Deren wanted to show people that movies could use symbolism to convey a story. Here, through symbolic objects and surreal imagery, the story of a married couple is conveyed.There's more than there appears. The story is so true. Everyone struggles with their decisions. Deren wanted to demonstrate how to tell a story with symbolism using a story that everyone can relate with.The film begins with a hand setting down a flower on pavement. The flower represents a good start to the marriage. A woman picks it up and takes it home. She unlocks the door and goes into an empty house. And so the symbolism comes to life. A phone is off the hook, symbolizing an unworthy and unfulfilled feeling the woman is experiencing; a knife is in bread, symbolizing that feeling of "I didn't make that decision right" that has stung her.The woman goes upstairs and finds her record player is on. The music from the player represents a good life with the woman and her husband. But the woman turns it off, now unsure if her decision was right and if she will have a good life. Confused and uneasy, the woman sinks into her chair, and falls asleep. And then what should appear but a hooded figure with a mirror for a face walking down the path. The woman follows but the figure has vanished out of sight. The woman gives up and discovers she is at her own doorstep.What does the figure represent? It's the mirror for the face that tells us. The mirror is supposed to be reflecting the woman's dark inner feelings that tell her the decision she made wasn't good for her. The mirror reflects all these versions of the woman until they are too much and try to win over her. The woman almost wants this to happen; she chases the figure. She later repeats the same action after going in: she enters the house, walks upstairs and turns off the player once again. The woman sees herself sleeping in the chair. She goes over to the window and sees herself chasing the figure. As she watches she pulls the key out of her mouth, the same one she used to unlock the house. She will use it to free her dark inner desires. A moment later we see the woman running down the path also but she doesn't catch the figure. Then we see the woman come back inside, were she sees the figure walk upstairs and place the flower on her bed, before the figure disappears from view. We have labeled the figure as evil. The flower represents a good start to the marriage, but the figure has put this idea to sleep by laying the flower on the bed. The figure wants to take advantage of the protagonist.Again the woman sees herself sleeping in the chair and again she goes to the window. She again sees herself chasing the hooded figure. And out of her mouth comes the key. The key turns into the knife, telling us both are symbolic of evil, and that the woman is tempted to use them to free herself of her troubles.She falls for the trap and walks into the kitchen. At the table two other versions of herself sit. The third version sits down and sets down the knife which turns back into the key. The first two versions take the key, and every time it is replaced by an identical key. The first two versions each have a key, and the third version is left to do the dirty work. The third form picks up the key, when we see her palm is black!, symbolizing evil. The key in the woman's palm turns into the knife. The woman has a shocked expression on her face. She turns around. She has on black glasses. Evil has possessed her. She crosses the beach and sidewalk to reach the chair. Down comes the knife, coming right towards the woman, but then the woman awakes and sees her husband bending over her.The man bends over and puts the phone back on the hook. It again was off. The woman still has the feeling of uneasiness, this tells us, but the man is trying to put her at ease by putting the phone back. The man goes upstairs holding the flower. The woman follows. She sees the man put the flower on the bed like the figure. Maybe this tells us the man too is struggling with his decision. The woman lies on the bed, thinking the man is on the side of evil. She sees the knife and in an attempt to rid herself of her struggles she hits him in the face with the knife. His face shatters. It was a mirror. We see pieces of mirror fall into the ocean.At the end we see the man come into the house. He opens the door. Pieces of a mirror are strewn around the chair with seaweed. The woman lies in the chair. She is dead and blood is trickling from the corner of her mouth. When the woman tried to free herself she died. Evil had possessed her and she could no longer live. Let this be a lesson to all of us. We mustn't let ourselves be overcome by our evil sides. No, we must stand our ground and deal with our problems. The woman here failed to do so, and as a result evil came to possess her. I would certainly recommend this; it deals with a problem we are all familiar with, and shows us the consequences. Deren married three times; maybe she too, like the woman portrayed, struggled with marriage. Who knows?

MisterWhiplash What does the key mean in this movie? That may sound like one of those questions your film professor would (smugly?) ask of you after seeing it in class, but I'm serious - what might this mean? Or does it mean anything? The thing with surrealist films, especially when they're short like this, is the matter of: do you question what you're seeing, interpret them, or let the images wash over you? Meshes of the Afternoon has a little more narrative than some other avant-garde short films - compared to Brakhage it has the formalism of John Ford - but there's plenty of mystery and wonder to be seen here, even with the filmmaker pointing out: 'Hey, it's just a dream... OR IS IT?!' A woman comes home (Deren, also the co-director), and falls asleep on the chair. We know this, and that she is likely dreaming, because of the way the camera pulls back from looking outside and seems to be inside of a circular tube. It's a fascinating device to bring the viewer into a dreamscape. Even with the knowledge that we're in surrealistic terrain from here-on out, the opening of the film still carries an eerie, abstract quality to it - we really don't get a good look at the woman's face at all, just her feet in the sandals walking up to the house and going inside, her legs and body, but not her face.I have to think that this is intentional and goes towards what others have pointed out, with Meshes being a movie about identity, about who a person (or especially what a *woman* is supposed to be). But like all strong and masterful surrealists, Deren and her collaborator also know that they shouldn't have to, and should not really, tell anything what is really going on. Sure, it could be about identity. It could also be 'about' any number of things: what does a dream 'mean' to you, if you are seeing multiple you's, or crawling up a wall, or holding a knife, or suddenly, when all seems to be "back to normal", crashing away the image of a husband with the knife into shards of glass on a beach. Yeah, that happens here.So much to take in in just under 14 minutes, and Deren fills the frame with deliciously shot, terrifying images. There's reason this has been touted over the years (and even preserved by the Library of Congress), since it deals in rich textures of the Home (in capital 'H'), and Deren herself is quite a figure to behold, with her big hair and face that is confused and kind of sexy (intentional or not, though there's also big black clothes, a correlation with the 'Figure in Black' with the Mirror face as well). There's certainly, if one can read anything concrete, feminine about the experience of Meshes of an Afternoon, and maybe it's just so personal an experience that it may mean different things to men and women alike.The wonder of the film, why it lasts, is that you can leave it open to interpretation, and a figure in black or seeing yourself on a couch, or being on a beach with a knife, these are striking images that are rich enough to be impactful. At the same time, the filmmakers are cognizant of how to compose a shot, and more importantly how to keep shots moving along. Unlike some other avant-garde/experimental/surreal shorts, this is not a chore to sit through, and it's not "pretentious" either. It's bizarre, awesome art.

Roman James Hoffman '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.

Jackson Booth-Millard The only reason I saw this film was because it appears in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I personally can't see why. Basically The Woman (Maya Deren, also directing) a woman picks up a flower, picks up a falling key, unlocks her door, and inside there is a knife in a loaf of bread, and the phone is off the hook. She soon naps, and supposedly dreams of a hooded figure with the face of a mirror going down the driveway, the knife on the stair, then on the bed with her. The figure puts the flower on the bed, then disappears, and this is all repeated again. She goes downstairs to nap in the chair, waking to see The Man (Alexander Hammid, also directing) upstairs with the flower, putting it on the bed, and after a mirror breaks, he enters the house again. One of the final shots sees the woman sitting at the table with two replicas of herself. This may not be as gory or disturbing, this dreamy film is certainly just as original as Un Chien Andalou or Eraserhead. It may be just under twenty minutes, but the camera angles are certainly effective, the study of psychological and physical reality is quite interesting, and even though I was confused throughout, that I guess is the point, it is an experimental film. Good!