Wednesday, September 01, 2010

The Tablecloth Shore

Last night I watched this;





At Land, a fifteen minute 1944 film directed by Maya Deren--she also starred in the movie and wrote it. It doesn't feel much like the decade it was made in. It actually kind of feels like a music video from the 80s, an impression augmented a bit by the fact that Deren looks sort of like Kate Bush.

It seems a bit influenced by the Alice books to me--her washing up on land reminds me of "The Pool of Tears" from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and her identification with the white pawn in a strange chess game is strongly reminiscent of Through the Looking Glass. It shares the broader idea with the Alice books of a young, female protagonist confronting an apparently nonsensical world of adults. Though the protagonist in this case is obviously much older, it still seems to be about her fundamental nature, emerging from the sea at the beginning like an early life form, surrounded by the abstract, contrived machine of adult reality.

It's not a bad little movie, and I'll probably watch more of her movies on YouTube at some point. It suited my weird lethargic mood last night. I played some Oblivion, too, which I was in the mood for after talking to Trisa on the phone about it the other day. I ended up just wandering around the forest at night looking up at the sky. That's the mood I was in. I wasn't drinking, either, because I had a headache. It could be I'm just not getting enough sleep, forcing myself to get up at 9am every day. But I'm enjoying daylight so much--even though it compels me to leave the house at least once every day. Every day feels like a holiday, Day Day, if you will.

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