Assignment -(7 Movie Analysis )

Meshes of the Afternoon

by Maya Deren

Meshes of the Afternoon launched the American avant-garde film look like happened in World War . the film depicts a woman’s imaginative dream and the way it eventually destroys the woman herself. As she sleeps and dreams, she repeatedly encounters a mysterious hooded figure whom she chases but cannot catch. With each failure, she re-enters her house, where the household objects she employs in her waking state — a key, a knife, a flower, a phonograph, and a tele- phone — assume intensifying potency in an environment that becomes increasingly disoriented. through such filmic means as creative editing, extreme camera angles, and slow motion, the movie creates a world in which it is more and more difficult for the woman to master the space and rooms around her. Finally, mul- tiplied into three versions of herself, the woman attempts to kill her sleeping body. But she is awakened by a man (played by Hammid ) only to find that physical reality, too, gives away to the dream logic of her imagination, ultimately causing her death. The mirror as a face of the cloaked creature symbolized introspection and when the same was used for suicide, it symbolized disintegration of identity. The beach symbolized a memory or a ray of hope, a window that showed the woman a different world.

Image References:

1.) Google.com. (2021). Redirect Notice. [online] Available at: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fanthologyfilmarchives.org%2Fcollections%2Freference-library%2Fstills%2F709&psig=AOvVaw0jQ_b_ANdxyY3aGGPChPAi&ust=1613700077205000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNCJ2bur8u4CFQAAAAAdAAAAABBX. [Accessed 14 Feb. 2021].

‌2.) Google.com. (2015). Redirect Notice. [online] Available at: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.the13thfloor.tv%2F2015%2F11%2F06%2Fweird-wonderful-and-surreal-cinema-getting-lost-in-meshes-of-the-afternoon%2F&psig=AOvVaw0jQ_b_ANdxyY3aGGPChPAi&ust=1613700077205000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNCJ2bur8u4CFQAAAAAdAAAAABBd [Accessed 14 Feb. 2021].