MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON
Dir. Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid
1943

Elliptical haunting nightmares inventing new dream logic. There’s a lineage of the dadaist and surrealist imagery of the early 20th century. I unfolded a greater understanding when I watched Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet, Wladyslaw Starevich’s The Cameraman’s Revenge, Man Ray’s Return to Reason. I saw Meshes of the Afternoon early in this journey, directed by reference to my love for David Lynch. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t “get it” then, appreciating some of the imagery but only able to make reference to things I had already seen.

I’m still nowhere near an expert on abstract or experimental cinema, having largely seen only the most acclaimed and beloved films or museum pieces I happened to have someone else program. I find it hard to engage with abstract cinema at home, especially anything longer than a few minutes long. Something like Bruce Baillie’s Quick Billy is hard for me to keep in my head with streaming video quality and phone notifications. So, please consider my love for Meshes of the Afternoon a pledge that you, whoever you are, can enjoy it too.

The story, told simply, is a cat & mouse between our heroine, a dreamer, and a mysterious stranger with a mirror for a face. She chases the mourner/reaper and finds it carries a knife. Parts of the chase keep recurring, both lived and observed from afar, omens of violence rising until a desperate conclusion. As much as I love the more daring shots, some of the most impactful are the mundane images. Closeups on her falling asleep in the chair or running to follow the mourner, those are such incredibly daring and modern images. The tension still gets me, the uncomfortable feeling of impending doom.

Meshes of the Afternoon is a late silent film, though Deren’s third husband Teiji Ito wrote a classical Japanese score (embedded above.) I’ve watched it with Ito’s score, in silence, with a faux-Badalamenti score, with Liturgy’s Aesthetica. My tip for watching silents at home, if you cannot find a score that works for you, is simply to put on music you feel like listening to. There are unexpected synergies to whatever you can choose, from Outkast to Buckwheat Zydeco. If it makes it easier to commit your attention, it’s the correct choice for that day.

I had to train myself to watch and enjoy silent film. It took about a year of learning how to watch what I was looking at, and many of my early Letterboxd reviews document growing pains in that process. I lack forgiveness of myself for failing to be a better critic sometimes. There’s a decent chance that ten years down the line, I’ll read most of what I’ve published in this birthday project and go, “ah, damn, what a naive kid.” I think writing about perspective in Meshes of the Afternoon is putting me both in the mindset of the dreamer and the mourner, looking to future’s past. While I take great pleasure in Meshes of the Afternoon, this film still stumps me. Let this be an engraving of humility, reminding me how much more room there is to grow.