At Land

This is a remarkable short experimental film by the great Maya Deren. Deren is best remembered for the powerful short "Meshes in the Afternoon" and her dance and films about Haiti. This film is perhaps her most rigorous and complex. It is entirely silent and has a remarkable fractured narrative connected by story fragments that have a perfect dreamlike logic. Few filmmakers have come closer to creating images and actions that have such emotional intensity and intellectual suggestiveness.

Like Maya Deren's first short Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land is a narrative story infused with surrealism. It flows more smoothly comparing to Meshes, but lacks the energy that her first film has. Also, the structure of several fragmented episodes lacks coherency; some parts may reflect the director's personal experiences and/or mindscapes so that the audience may get confused. For example, the scene of the female protagonist walking with a young man and then meeting an old man in a bed seems barely related to the main story and unnecessary.

Watching some of Maya Deren's works made me think that directors like David Lynch owe a lot to this brilliant woman.

At land is one of the most beautiful and innovative movies I have ever seen. At Land is like a dream that is brought to the screen something I don't think any other director has succeeding in doing so well. The images of the sea, of the 2 women playing chess (and every other scene) don't seem to be connected in any way, but just like a dream that you have just waken up from it leaves you with the feeling you had an experience you couldn't even think of. Very beautiful and one of Maya Deren's best films.

Maya Deren certainly does capture her dreams. Even through a silent soundtrack, she creates a gripping linear story line out of symbols, scattered situations, and moods. Through it all, she displays a sensuous love for cinematography by eliminating all but one dischordant splice. It flows together as an answer to all the movie-lovers who wished movies would cut between shots with a little more flow. Not to mention, that she's a fricking lovely actress! To me, it's even more accomplished than her "Meshes of the Afternoon" from the year before, since it's less frenzied, and takes its time to build a mood that draws the viewer in and ends up accelerating with unexpected twists.

There's less of the symbolic to grapple with in AT LAND compared to Maya Deren's MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, although there's probably a good deal to analyze, if you're so inclined, about a woman looking for a chess pawn, then clutching it to her chest and running on a beach as her other selves look curiously at her. Less jarring (although Maya Deren does walk in on her own POV shot at one point!), more linear and sure of itself, this is almost the Lucifer Rising to Meshes' Invocation of my Demon Brother (to bring Kenneth Anger into the fold). Whereas Meshes had a syncopated, almost nervous quality about it, AT LAND is more lyrical, still dreamlike in atmosphere, but exchanging cramped apartments, hooded figures and knives for open beach spaces, giant scaffolds, and games of chess. I won't presume to know what it all means, and like Meshes, I suspect I would find the answer infinitely less satisfying or intriguing than the question itself but lovers of the avant-guard will find a lot to like.