Take 40: Meshes of the Afternoon
In July, 2015, the BBC released a list of the 100 Greatest American Films, curated by polling critics all over the world. I’m watching them and writing about them as a form of self taught film school. This week… we’re taking on number 40: Meshes of the Afternoon. This film holds the dubious distinction of being the only movie with a female directing credit. As always, there will be spoilers.
I finally arrived at the one film on this list with a credited female director, so of course, it’s also the only film under 15 minutes. Maya Deren shares the director credit for Meshes of the Afternoon with her husband, Alexandr Hackenschmied, who was also the cinematographer. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that this is also the film with the lowest budget for the bargain price of $275. The piece is firmly in the “art” polar extreme of the spectrum between art and entertainment — it is abstract and visceral — to my modern sensibilities it reads like an art school thesis project. However, for a short silent film released in 1940, it still has some streaks of freshness and surprise.
The plot is definitely subject to interpretation, but there are key symbols in a recurring circular narrative: a flower, a key, an ominous figure with a mirror face. The story is told in rounds, and there are obvious traces of the work woven throughout the career of David Lynch. Like Lynch, the film captures the surrealness and terror of a dream state. The dreamy haze is used to both evoke that state of mind, and expose angles of our interior consciousness that was otherwise inaccessible. I personally have experienced sleep paralysis, most often when I doze off on a hot afternoon, and this film captures the terror that comes with blending sleep and awareness to a nearly perfect degree. Like that half sleep spell, the action of the film is like a runner on a track, but with each lap there’s a deeper understanding of the message that the heroine, and Deren in particular, is conveying.
The film is considered an important feminist contribution to the medium, and it is a rare film on the list from before the 1970s that endeavors to show life from a woman’s perspective and with a woman behind the camera.
My interpretation of the work is that the woman in the film is reconciling her perception of herself and the image of herself through the eyes of her husband. This conflict is reiterated in the recurring objects: a key to self actualization is at times in her possession and at others it’s out of grasp.
She holds a flower or sees it in the hands of the mirrored man, which I view as an internal battle between autonomy and dependency on her husband. Maybe I’m projecting. But I love that about art. I love that about Lynch’s film — he doesn’t give you the answer but instead it’s a blueprint of innuendo and suggestion, using mood as much as exposition to push forward the narrative.
I will keep it short in honor of a short film, but instead of spending 15 minutes on TikTok or whatever you do to kill time, give Meshes of the Afternoon a shot to see how valuable it can be when diverse creators find a sliver of the spotlight.
