After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This is a really good short film. it has lots of strange cinematography, and it's silent. The antagonist is mysterious, and horrifying. The ending scene is startling, didn't expect that coming.

Cinematic art like "Meshes of the Afternoon" has no single definitive meaning, but rather scores of meanings that differ from viewer to viewer.To me, the most telling symbols in the film were:the bread knife, a possible phallic symbol which moves seemingly on its own and evokes a feeling of encroaching dangerthe ominous black figure with a mirror for a face (part of the subject's consciousness, perhaps her future self, like the Ghost of Christmas Future)the phone left off the hook (desires and intentions left unsaid and unfulfilled)

This is the first short film from notable experimental film maker Maya Deren. She was still in her 20s when she wrote, directed and starred in "Meshes of the Afternoon" and got help from her then husband Alexander Hammid in all these areas except writing. It runs for 14 minutes and is entirely black-and-white. Nobody's talking, but it is not a silent film. It's obviously a story about dream and reality and the boundaries between these two not being always very clear. To me, the most interesting thing about it is probably that it was made in the US during World War II. Now if you know a bit about film history, you will know that, at this point in time, especially the American cartoon and war documentary industries were really booming. So these 14 minutes are something entirely different compared to the latest trends in movies back then. However, I have to say I found it boring and don't have the slightest need to rewatch this anytime soon. The depiction of death was pretty nice and so were Deren's look. Still not enough, not recommended.

What does the key mean in this movie? That may sound like one of those questions your film professor would (smugly?) ask of you after seeing it in class, but I'm serious - what might this mean? Or does it mean anything? The thing with surrealist films, especially when they're short like this, is the matter of: do you question what you're seeing, interpret them, or let the images wash over you? Meshes of the Afternoon has a little more narrative than some other avant-garde short films - compared to Brakhage it has the formalism of John Ford - but there's plenty of mystery and wonder to be seen here, even with the filmmaker pointing out: 'Hey, it's just a dream... OR IS IT?!' A woman comes home (Deren, also the co-director), and falls asleep on the chair. We know this, and that she is likely dreaming, because of the way the camera pulls back from looking outside and seems to be inside of a circular tube. It's a fascinating device to bring the viewer into a dreamscape. Even with the knowledge that we're in surrealistic terrain from here-on out, the opening of the film still carries an eerie, abstract quality to it - we really don't get a good look at the woman's face at all, just her feet in the sandals walking up to the house and going inside, her legs and body, but not her face.I have to think that this is intentional and goes towards what others have pointed out, with Meshes being a movie about identity, about who a person (or especially what a *woman* is supposed to be). But like all strong and masterful surrealists, Deren and her collaborator also know that they shouldn't have to, and should not really, tell anything what is really going on. Sure, it could be about identity. It could also be 'about' any number of things: what does a dream 'mean' to you, if you are seeing multiple you's, or crawling up a wall, or holding a knife, or suddenly, when all seems to be "back to normal", crashing away the image of a husband with the knife into shards of glass on a beach. Yeah, that happens here.So much to take in in just under 14 minutes, and Deren fills the frame with deliciously shot, terrifying images. There's reason this has been touted over the years (and even preserved by the Library of Congress), since it deals in rich textures of the Home (in capital 'H'), and Deren herself is quite a figure to behold, with her big hair and face that is confused and kind of sexy (intentional or not, though there's also big black clothes, a correlation with the 'Figure in Black' with the Mirror face as well). There's certainly, if one can read anything concrete, feminine about the experience of Meshes of an Afternoon, and maybe it's just so personal an experience that it may mean different things to men and women alike.The wonder of the film, why it lasts, is that you can leave it open to interpretation, and a figure in black or seeing yourself on a couch, or being on a beach with a knife, these are striking images that are rich enough to be impactful. At the same time, the filmmakers are cognizant of how to compose a shot, and more importantly how to keep shots moving along. Unlike some other avant-garde/experimental/surreal shorts, this is not a chore to sit through, and it's not "pretentious" either. It's bizarre, awesome art.