Compare with “Meshes of the Afternoon”

I just remaindered that Matthew mentioned a short film yesterday. He said my story was a bit similar to this experimental piece. I was curious and watched it. Then I shocked.

Let me put it in this way: that is one exactly I want to make! Express feeling and desire well and living in a dream, you don’t know when is real in the structure that director used. Using a number of psychological symbol, affluent montage editing makes me can watch it over and over again. Especially the amazing ending, in my opinion, the lady break the mirror is broke herself.

As I haven’t explained before the symbolism I used in my film (I don’t like to talk much about this actually, which can be read differently), I want to tell one of the symbol both of us used, mirror. Lacan (2004) suggested a human child have not recognise himself as I until the baby see himself in the mirror, he called it mirror stage. It is an identification, Lacan shows it in the full sense anaylise gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes [assume] an image. Moreover, it called the “ideal-I”. In this case, when the first time the child see himself in a mirror, he recognise the environment is totally the same as he sees and the only different part is him, it strengths the consciousness of ego.

Thus, we can read the mirror man in Meshes of the Afternoon as a eye from others to let the lady aware herself. Or can be understood as a element effects ego. I used same symbol as well. Actress sit in front of the mirror look at herself and eating. The huge mirror will clone actress showing one by one and full in the mirror. It could be understood as a desire of ego.

There is no doubt that Meshes of the Afternoon success on experimental cinema. I’ll watch more works from this couple director Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid.

ref

Meshes of the Afternoon. 1943. [film] USA

Lacan, J. 2004. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of The I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. 15th edition. New York & London: Norton. [pdf] Available at: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Lacan%20Mirror%20Stage.pdf