Meditation on Violence (Short 1949)

Meditation on Violence: Directed by Maya Deren. With Chao Li Chi. The setting with the low walls and river views is located in a private area of The Cloisters museum.

“There are two threads running throughout the oeuvre of Ukrainian-born American experimental film-maker Maya Deren: the first, and the one which she executed most effectively in her first film u0026quot;Meshes in the Afternoonu0026quot; (1943), is the exploration of womenu0026#39;s identity; and the second, which dominated her later films beginning with u0026quot;A study in choreography for camerau0026quot; (1945), is dance. Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say that the second common thread in her movies is movement – and often, but not exclusively (as the reverse rolling waves from the beginning of her second film u0026quot;At Landu0026quot; (1944) will attest) the form which expresses this movement is dance. However, the concept of u0026quot;Meditation on violenceu0026quot; is that, in giving the whole of the 12 minutes of the film to a martial artist demonstrating his moves – at first inside and bare-hand, and then outside with a sword – Deren is able to conflate the potential violence inherent in the form with the elegance of a dancer. Then, two-thirds of the way through the film she plays the film in reverse but the moves of the martial artist up to that point are so fluid and natural and its possible to overlook this were it not for a couple of gestures and, as a result, effectively using the human body to show the beauty of perpetual fluid motion.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHowever, all this being said, I didnu0026#39;t enjoy this movie and despite its relative brevity I found myself bored after a couple of minutes. I felt this as, not being a dancer, I donu0026#39;t have the same fascination with the human body that Deren herself obviously had. Whatu0026#39;s more, while Kung Fu hadnu0026#39;t entered the pop-culture lexicon back in 1948, in the decades post-Bruce Lee and from the grandiose movies of Zhang Yimou, the balletic quality of martial arts is not such an exotic concept. Kudos for Deren for probably being the first to do so, but I was bored nonetheless. Saying this, I donu0026#39;t wish to sound like a complete philistine as, indeed, it was through watching Derenu0026#39;s own u0026quot;A study in choreography for camerau0026quot; that I learned to appreciate, albeit superficially, the beauty of the human form in motion. However, u0026quot;A study…u0026quot; is only 2 minutes long compared to the 12 of u0026quot;Meditation…u0026quot;. Furthermore, while dance would also go on to dominate u0026quot;The Very Eye of Nightu0026quot; (1958), in this latter film Deren employs her hallmark creative editing techniques to give the appearance of a dream or hallucination whereas in u0026quot;Meditation…u0026quot; I suspect she wished to simply use the human body as the subject and show the elegance of movement itu0026#39;s capable of unadorned with cinematic artifice. Admirable, and not without merit, but u0026quot;Mediation on violenceu0026quot; stands as Derenu0026#39;s least satisfying film for me.”