Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.
Meshes of the Afternoon is a landmark of avant-garde cinema and American experimental film. Its cinematography is genuinely groundbreaking — the subjective camera work, distorted perspectives, and dreamlike visual logic are extraordinary for 1943 and remain striking today. Novelty is undeniably high: Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid created a wholly singular work that defined a mode of surrealist personal filmmaking with no real precedent in American cinema. The plot is deliberately fragmented and elliptical — more a mood and psychological structure than a narrative — which works on its own terms but limits traditional plot assessment to above average rather than exceptional. Acting is minimal and stylized by design, serving the hypnotic aesthetic rather than demonstrating conventional performance craft. The ending, with its ambiguous collapse of dream and reality around the suicide motif, is haunting and effective but not quite as fully realized as the film's visual peak moments.