Meshes of the Afternoon
For the Identity project I researched Meshes of the Afternoon
"Meshes of the Afternoon is a 1943 American short experimental film directed by and starring wife-and-husband team, Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWQcJyn981M
Cinematography of "Meshes of the Afternoon" and how it influenced the "Acceptance" short film?
I was recommended this movie by one of the tutors, he recommended it after hearing we planned our short film to be silent. With "Meshes of the Afternoon" having now sound it was a good inspiration for what kind of pacing our film should follow.
While watching it I noticed a lot of unconventional shots including but not limited to- dutch angels, birds eye view and shots where characters were not visible instead only their shadows could be seen. This lends to the abstractness of the film and conveys a dream-like feeling. Our group tried to mimic Certain aspects of this in "Acceptance" with few unconventional shots, these were the overhead shots, we attempted few first person perspective shots and lastly most of the feeling (especially in the earlier drafts) were done through body language alone. However due to time restraints we weren't capable of taking it as far as I personally would like.
However I think we were at least semi capable of replicating a dream-like feeling for our short film. Since our own film "Acceptance" is not supposed to be as abstract as "Meshes of the Afternoon" I would say that is more than enough.
My interpretation of "Meshes of the Afternoon"I had a strong dream-like feeling from the film and its visuals.
I had a strong dream-like feeling from the film and its visuals.
At first it didn't seem to have much of a deeper meaning and seemed to be just a way for the creators to experiment with their ideas. However as the story went on it became increasingly clear to me that the film was portraying the mental distress of the woman. It was showcasing her feeling of being trapped in a loop with only one way out, death. The repeated focus on the knife and her refusal to use it was a metaphor for her struggle with her mental health ending in suicide as she decides to end the repeating cycle.
When first watching I thought she was struggling with thoughts of murder. However, her struggle was with her own life. In the movie the dream-like sequence traps her in a loop and the longer she stays the more she seems to struggle with going on until the last shot of her being dead in her seat discovered by her husband.
Secondary source analysis
In my first sours I discovered the genre of the film is psychodrama and was never meant to be surrealist as "According to Sitney, Maya actually hated surrealism and had written pages on the specific meanings of all the different elements in her films." which had caught me of guard as I had assumed this movie was in fact meant to be surrealist. However it makes sense with my interpretation of it since I believe to write an impactful and meaningful dream you need to write it quite deliberately. I also learned that in one of the scenes where Maya is walking to stab her self the meaning for all the different sceneries she walks trough is "…you have come a long way—from the beginning of time—to kill yourself." according to the author.
the sources
- https://screenanarchy.com/2019/07/a-quick-look-at-maya-derens-meshes-of-the-afternoon-contrib.html
- https://niamhfennfilmstudies.wordpress.com/2018/01/17/short-film-analysis-meshes-of-the-afternoon/
- https://jyantika-14523.medium.com/meshes-of-the-afternoon-analysis-of-representation-symbolism-31f75b332cc8#:~:text=The%20multiple%20versions%20of%20the,knife%20symbolized%20masculinity%20and%20danger.
Conclusion
"Meshes of the Afternoon" is a brilliant and well thought out experimental short film with aspects of psychodrama and the more I look at the editing of our own film "Acceptance" the more I can see the influence it had on our work.