Meshes Of The Afternoon Analysis

In Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren we are shown a love story between two people. In most love stories we see a couple go through the highs and lows of a relationship. We see how far the partners will go for each other and we see if they can make it through the lows in their relationship. Maya Deren depicts a relationship in a very unconventional way. The love story we see in Meshes of the Afternoon is much more than a couple coming together. Maya Deren shows us the cost of wanting to be and have desire. She argues that we change ourselves when we are desired and we become someone we are not. Everyone has a desire to be desired but when someone desires us we are not our own self.

The most desirable part for the woman in her relationship was chasing after her lover. At first the mysterious figure seems impossible

But we often have to fake ourselves at the beginning of a relationship because we don't want the desirable to find out something that they don’t like about us. This leads to us set aside some of our likes or actions to make it seem like we are more desirable. We see this when the girl first opens the door with the key and after with the key and door both playing a big part in the idea of opening up to our partner the whole movie. When the woman first tries to open the door it doesn’t move making her reach for the key in her purse. When she takes the key out she drops it and chases it down the stairs. Eventually she makes it into the house but the scene shows the hesitation of opening up to someone. When we first meet someone we aren’t open about our lives completely. That doesn’t mean we lie to the other person but we keep things hidden that we think would cause us to be undesirable. Every time after the initial scene of her opening the door to the house the characters are able to open and come inside the house freely. This shows that the women has opened up to her partner but to what