Touches You

Lack of good storyline.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

A wonderful short film that I stumbled upon via a little gif on Tumblr (the key turning into a knife). This a dark, artful piece about a woman who is / gets caught in a time-loop. The outcome is that she is finally found dead (suicide, probably) by a man, most likely to be her lover. One could interpret her going round and round in circles in more than one way, I suppose. My main idea is that, while she is dead, her soul / ghost is trying to figure out where it / she is. Or what it / she is, namely dead. Just my two cents, though. It also reminds me of the later giallo genre, at certain moments, especially when Maya Deren's face is reflected in the blade of the knife.Even without a perfectly reasonable explanation, one can still enjoy all the wonderful and mysterious, but at many times quite eerie, imagery of some Hollywood apartment block (inside and outside) knives, stairs, (broken) mirrors, black robes, keys, and such. The soundtrack, the original one by Teiji Ito, is just as wonderful, with some soothing acoustic guitars here and there, but also with a lot of haunting voices and percussion.For now, a big 9 out of 10. Note to self: watch more work by Maya Deren (and what a beauty she is, by the way)!

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.The film was the product of Deren's and Hammid's desire to create an avant garde personal film that dealt with devastating psychological problems, like the French surrealist films of the 1920s such as Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930).In 1990, Meshes of the Afternoon was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", going into the registry in the second year of voting. In 2015 the BBC named the film the 40th greatest American movie ever made.The dreamlike (or nightmarish) atmosphere of Meshes has influenced many subsequent films, notably David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997). Jim Emerson has also noted the influence of Meshes within David Lynch's film, Inland Empire. Meshes also had a clear influence on Lynch's film Mulholland Drive with dual roles, a mysterious figure, winding Hollywood road, a dream within a dream, a woman viewing her own body in a dream, and iconic objects such as a key and a telephone.This film is incredible, and it shocks me that it and its creators are not better known. They deserve to be on the same level as Bunuel and Lynch, but yet do not seem to be known outside of those who really have a passion for avant-garde or surreal film.

The only reason I saw this film was because it appears in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I personally can't see why. Basically The Woman (Maya Deren, also directing) a woman picks up a flower, picks up a falling key, unlocks her door, and inside there is a knife in a loaf of bread, and the phone is off the hook. She soon naps, and supposedly dreams of a hooded figure with the face of a mirror going down the driveway, the knife on the stair, then on the bed with her. The figure puts the flower on the bed, then disappears, and this is all repeated again. She goes downstairs to nap in the chair, waking to see The Man (Alexander Hammid, also directing) upstairs with the flower, putting it on the bed, and after a mirror breaks, he enters the house again. One of the final shots sees the woman sitting at the table with two replicas of herself. This may not be as gory or disturbing, this dreamy film is certainly just as original as Un Chien Andalou or Eraserhead. It may be just under twenty minutes, but the camera angles are certainly effective, the study of psychological and physical reality is quite interesting, and even though I was confused throughout, that I guess is the point, it is an experimental film. Good!

Have American filmmakers ever been as experimental as Deren since this short was made? If so, my guess is not very often - not as far as I know anyway. It really is astonishing to think that this was made in 1943, in the midst of WWII! A fellow IMDb user had first recommended I watch this when a while back, I had started a thread about movies that should be taken in non-rationally on one of the boards. I can now completely see why he urged me to watch this: whatever side of the brain it is that we use when our rationality is switched off, is the side one must use to make the most of Deren's film. Symbols aplenty - symbols I wasn't especially trying to interpret, but just trying to take in with everything else that was going on - Maya Deren's own very striking, very beautiful physical presence, a Death-like figure bearing a fake flower (but they're not the only one to carry it during the course of the movie), a key popping out of Deren's mouth which reminded me of the cover of Kate Bush's The Dreaming album, shadows, light, repetitions, interiors, exteriors... just soak it in, and don't try and explain it.