This is one of Lynch's favorite films, and supposedly is a big influence on Inland Empire (which I'm still waiting impatiently to see). Watching it reminded me of the inscrutability of Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, and contained many frequent Lynch symbols like keys, doppelgangers, troubled women, and mirrors.
shareI have some idea of why Lynch likes this film but I thought it was pretentious and boring; it knows the words but not the music. Lynch's movies are avant garde meditations on the nature of reality and some of the horrors of ordinary life; but besides being avant garde he's a real filmmaker who makes work that's visually and aurally alive (his films have probably the best sound design of any director since Kubrick and Kurosawa passed in the late 90s). This film feels like it's trying really hard to be abstract and the feminist message feels pretty hamfisted today. Most importantly, unlike Lynch, Deren doesn't have the tools or budget of a real filmmaker to make something interesting. Filmmaking just isn't a democratic art and you really need resources to make something interesting; no matter how hard someone works on their YouTube video they could do it better and more interesting with a real crew, and props, and lights, and money.
shareWhere did you see that Lynch knows Meshes of the Afternoon ?
'cause I'm the biggest Lynch fan and I never heard of it.
Everytime someone asks about his influences he barely mentions anything besides Sunset Boulevard and Kafka's novel and short stories.
Ronald Quincy Dobbs--
I love Lynch too, but I think you are completely off the mark re Meshes. To fully appreciate it, you must view the film within its historical and cultural context. Midcentury avant-garde filmmakers like Deren, working with low budgets and limited resources, did amazing work. Deren's landmark film is suggestive, haunting, complex (hardly "hamfisted")--and, for the time, quite radical (in the 1940s, mainstream Hollywood was not accommodating to women directors or their Freudian nightmares). Plus, Meshes is (arguably) the single most influential avant-garde American film; filmmakers, video directors, and TV commercials have, for decades, evinced this influence. Lynch reportedly saw the film in his youth and was deeply impressed by it. Without Deren, there would probably be no Lynch. It's as simple as that.
I'm aware of the importance of meshes, I just never heard Lynch talk about it and I'd like to see a quote about that.
shareyes of course, it's like a Lynch's short.
also At Land by Maya Deren.
Is that your blood?
Some of it, yeah.
Ronald Quincy Dobbs-
Ever seen Faces?
Ever seen Mean Streets?
Try and make the argument that Faces is a bad film. Try and make the argument that Mean Streets is a bad film. You will fail.
And why would you assume that lighting was not employed for Meshes?
What do FACES or MEAN STREETS have to do with anything? They aren't even their respective directors' first films. I guess I could see someone logically comparing WHO'S THAT KNOCKING... or SHADOWS to Deren's debut masterpiece, but still, neither Cassavetes nor Marty make (or made, in John's case) surrealist (or experimental) pictures. Or at least, that's not what they're known for.
And I've seen plenty of decent arguments against MEAN STREETS. FACES is different, because no one these days really cares about Cassavetes anymore (I loved the man and his work), but MEAN STREETS is a rough film, and far from perfect. It is one of my favorite of Marty's films, but I wouldn't necessarily call it one of his best. He was still too inexperienced to make work with the kind of technical grandeur you see in his recent films. It's very powerful, only topped, in my opinion, by TAXI DRIVER as far as the emotional impact it had on me.
Now Playing ... Small Change by Tom Waits
yeah, I didn't make it clear who I was talking to, or what about, did I?
: p
Ronald Quincy Dobbs: "Most importantly, unlike Lynch, Deren doesn't have the tools or budget of a real filmmaker to make something interesting. Filmmaking just isn't a democratic art and you really need resources to make something interesting; no matter how hard someone works on their YouTube video they could do it better and more interesting with a real crew, and props, and lights, and money."
That's like saying Cassavetes or Scorsese aren't a real film makers because they didn't have a lot of money for their early films.
Which is a joke. And an insult.
And I definitely agree about how rough Mean Streets is, and sometimes it's really grating. But Goodfellas is really rough too, in a lot of ways, especially with continuity editing and stuff like that. And although that stuff is important, I've always felt it's a lot more dispensable than passion and honesty and creativity, which Scorsese and Cassavetes, and most importantly for this discussion, Deren, had in spades.
But really I think Deren is very skilled technically and I don't see a problem with her low budget.
"Cassavetes or Scorsese didn´t have a lot of money for their early films".
Although I see your point, you cannot seriously compare the budget of Mean Streets to something like Meshes. They´re in totally different leagues.
"But Goodfellas is really rough, too".
Goodfellas is about the slickest movie I´ve ever seen.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
Really? You're quoting Ronald Reagan?
shareThat's awesome! As I was watching it I couldn't help but think of Mulholland Dr and wonder if he was influenced by this. Now I know :).
Voting Hist.http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=26598711
Yes, it's clear that Lynch's "Mulholland Dr." is *way* influenced by "Meshes."
sharesupposedly is a big influence on Inland Empire
Really? I saw this back in November as one of several "advant-garde" films for my cinema studies class, and I had been wondering if it had any influence on Lynch (I even went as far as to see how many David Lynch jokes I could make during the tutorial).
Personally, there was one particular element that seemed to really remind me of Lost Highway, that being the apparently impossible time loop. The way the girl in this short kept walking into her house and then seeing herself out on the street as at the beginning seemed to remind me a lot of how Lynch's film ends with Bill Pullman apparently leaving himself the message he received at the beginning.
"You are false data"- Dark Star
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"- 2001: A Space Odyssey
Personally, there was one particular element that seemed to really remind me of Lost Highway, that being the apparently impossible time loop. The way the girl in this short kept walking into her house and then seeing herself out on the street as at the beginning seemed to remind me a lot of how Lynch's film ends with Bill Pullman apparently leaving himself the message he received at the beginning.
That would be a somewhat closer comparison, yes.
David Lynch walks into a bar... he won't give me the punchline.
Or Laura Dern in Inland Empire almost walking in on a meeting she herself attended earlier in 'Inland Empire'.
shareThe connections are impossible to miss and Mulholland Drive almost feels like a feature-length adaptation/variation of this film.
And yet apparently it a complete coincidence! A matter of great minds thinking alike I suppose:
"When I asked [Lynch] in 2004 if he had experienced Deren's work, or even heard of her, he said, 'No.'"
- Greg Olson, "David Lynch: Beautiful Dark" (published 2007)