Reaction to The Lead Shoes

Personally, I did not enjoy either of the Sidney Peterson films we watched in class. During The Lead Shoes I found myself thinking back on the character in The Cage, jealously wishing I would lose my eyes. I felt that the film was too long and that it was not a deliberate choice to create deeper meaning. Perhaps the "lead shoes" was merely referring to the films pacing. I did notice a technical effect used in other avant-garde films shown in class. Examples of reversing the film (though I'm not sure what this would technically be called) like when the woman uncovers the diver in the sand or when she leaps back onto the window ledge, goes inside and puts her shoes on. I felt that there were several incongruous components to this film, the woman and the diver, the girl playing hopscotch, and the strange nondiegetic sound/music. I hesitate to call the instrumentals and voiceover "music" because it was simply grating to the ears. I kept thinking of the sequence of the woman playing hopscotch because it was used for the main titles and shown several times throughout the film, yet I never determined any kind of meaning for it being included. By the end of the film I had decided that the Diver was the basis for the title The Lead Shoes even though the woman seemed to be the primary character of the film. This film showed an avant-garde style that manages to have a narrative to the film, yet still prevent the viewer from making any sense out of it.