I had the pleasure of watching Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon just minutes after watching Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou. And although Buñuel's movie is the most famous and most influential of the two, I not only enjoyed Deren's more but I also found it more intelligent and better made.
Although Buñuel's movie rejects any narrative and interpretation, Deren's movie is a little narrative of a nightmare, plunging the viewer deep into a dark, intimate world full of symbols, scary figures and elliptic storytelling. All in all, it's much more dreamlike than Un Chien Andalou.
A hand leaves a flower on a pathway. A woman picks it up. Enters a house. Objects are out of place. She falls asleep. The narrative begins anew, with small differences. Then it starts again, each time oddly familiar but always with differences. At one point the viewer asks himself if the woman isn't just dreaming about herself in an endless loop? Maybe she is, maybe she's not. The movie doesn't explain anything, it merely presents a situation and invites the viewer to think about what it means. The tone of the movie is depressing and austere, and was originally made without sound. I enjoy weird movies, and I can say I've seldom seen one that so easily captured the nature of a nightmare, by being terrifying without really showing anything terrifying. Like a painting by Escher or a short-story by Jorge Luis Borges, Meshes of the Afternoon is a work of art that transcends reality and touches the viewer on a level above language and reason.
Although Buñuel's movie rejects any narrative and interpretation, Deren's movie is a little narrative of a nightmare, plunging the viewer deep into a dark, intimate world full of symbols, scary figures and elliptic storytelling. All in all, it's much more dreamlike than Un Chien Andalou.
A hand leaves a flower on a pathway. A woman picks it up. Enters a house. Objects are out of place. She falls asleep. The narrative begins anew, with small differences. Then it starts again, each time oddly familiar but always with differences. At one point the viewer asks himself if the woman isn't just dreaming about herself in an endless loop? Maybe she is, maybe she's not. The movie doesn't explain anything, it merely presents a situation and invites the viewer to think about what it means. The tone of the movie is depressing and austere, and was originally made without sound. I enjoy weird movies, and I can say I've seldom seen one that so easily captured the nature of a nightmare, by being terrifying without really showing anything terrifying. Like a painting by Escher or a short-story by Jorge Luis Borges, Meshes of the Afternoon is a work of art that transcends reality and touches the viewer on a level above language and reason.