My Dinner With Andre

 

 

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I rented the film based on some vague rememberance of its critical acclaim without knowing anything about it. What a mistake. It got great notices because it was "different" and "daring", I suppose. But that doesn't mean it's GOOD! Andre Gregory comes off as an incredibly narcisstic bore. His ramblings sound like some recycled Sartre from an Intro to Philosophy class. At one point I wondered about his mental stability, when he talks about meeting the Greek god Pan in Scotland. Oh, really, Andre? The guys in the white coats will be here shortly, don't worry.

This movie is amazing in its ability to numb the mind. I kept hoping that a point would be made. At one juncture, it looks like Shawn is going to challenge this guy's insufferable self-indulgence, but in the end he goes along for the ride and gets almost as ridiculous. In the end, the movie is filled with the elitist attitude that some artists have -- namely, that they are somehow able to "feel more" than us ordinary mortals. I find this in particular to be obnoxious and offensive.

Shawn did play a Ferengi on "Star Trek:Deep Space Nine", so he at least is capable of fun. But only a masochist would think it was a good time to spend a dinner with Andre. Be forewarned!

I just finished this movie, and I feel like I need to simply get a few thoughts down before my head hits my pillow. I didn't know what to expect entering My Dinner With Andre - after all, it is a movie about two guys who have dinner in a restaurant and talk the whole time. But from the moment that the goofy-looking, awkward Wallace Shawn lumbers down a New York street and we hear his voice-over, I knew that something more was taking place in this movie. What it was, I had no idea.

There are no character names; there is no 'plot;' Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, both prominent actors/playwrights of New York, meet after not having seen each other for years and they shoot the breeze. I learned that it's not as extemporaneous as I originally had imagined - Shawn and Gregory got together, recorded hours of their conversations, and then compiled a script based on them. The 'restaurant' is actually a defunct hotel, the waiters and barkeepers all actors. But there's a transcendence to it all, as the men sit and chat (mostly the powerful, lively Andre Gregory doing the talking), food being brought out to them.

What heightens the power of the film is the setup that Wallace gives in the voice-over before their dinner: Andre, the man he meets, has been living a peculiar existence traveling all over the world, when he used to never want to leave his family. A friend of Wallace's saw Andre weeks before sobbing uncontrollably on the street because he was violently moved by a line in Bergman's Autumn Sonata. Like Wallace, we don't know what to expect in the very context of the dinner conversation.

Some of the things that Andre and Wallace discuss in this movie are so unimaginably crazy, so hauntingly horrific, that even the mental images that went through my head sent chills all the way through me. At one point, Andre tells of a strange rite with some friends on Halloween in which some of them let him through a strange process of being stripped completely naked, bathed, led through a field, lowered into a grave and buried alive for half an hour. Of course, I tell you this just to tantalize you, because to begin to even summarize what goes on in 110 perfect minutes would be impossible. Andre and Wallace discuss love, marriage, perception and reality, theology, and even the validity of their very statements. That they relate it with such grace and raw, real emotion makes me refuse to believe that this was staged in any way. It feels so natural.

I can't believe that something like this could actually make its way onto film, because it's such an amazing achievement for the art itself - in a way (especially in an early story that Andre tells about the nature of performance), seeing these men talk over dinner on film is the actual embodiment of a movie folding into itself in perpetuity. These men are real figures, play real figures in the film, recreate real conversations, and talk about reality in such a way that a heightened sense of awareness pervades the whole film. I didn't get up once, check the time - a few times I leaned closer to the screen because what was being said struck so close to me, hit home so hard, that I wanted to just be nearer to it. At one point, I gasped as Andre related the idea of New York, of working society being a new kind of concentration camp in which the prisoners make the prison, abide by the rules, and don't even realize it's holding them in. Whether I believe that or not is irrelevant - the fact that it's worked into a conversation like this is amazing.

The movie moves with grace between moments of hauntingly dark realizations, to soaring epiphanies of happiness and then back again. Much of the film may be discussion about the zombie-like nature of human existence, but there is a certain empowering quality to it all. My Dinner With Andre is not just about a conversation; it is about living; it is about life; it is about reality; it is about love; but most of all it is about the fact that we can all be happy with what we have right now, even with the infinite, scary knowledge that we receive over time. We meet a man who personnifies 'normalcy' with every gesture (Wallace), and yet there's a man who has done everything in his power to resist stasis (Andre). I left the movie with a changed perspective on each man, which I'm sure is what happened between them, too. More than a few times, I felt on the verge of tears watching this, and I felt it more than ever when Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie for Piano" began at the film's conclusion. One of the most transcendent works of music was chosen for one of the most transcendently great films I've ever seen. How cool.

I'm sorry. I'm just rambling at 2:15am, but I just thought it was impossible to not attempt to put into words what could be one of the single most important experiences I've ever had with a movie. I've seen a handful of movies that have drastically changed my thinking about a certain theme or notion. My Dinner With Andre might have just changed my life.

Recently I made a resolution to own and review more Criterion editions of films and I've made plans to purchase one a month. This month's is Louis Malle's "My Dinner with Andre", though attributing it as the property of its director would do a great disservice to screenwriters Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, who also play the film's main characters. It had been a few years since I'd seen it, and while it unfolds in a simple and unforgettable format - two men sit in a restaurant and talk - I had forgotten exactly what about their discussions had made it such a fascinating oddity in the back of my mind.

The film opens with shots of Wally traveling across New York City to meet Andre for dinner. Wally is a meek and nervous playwright who spends his days performing the errands of the playwright who hasn't yet had a success. He has a girlfriend and worries about paying his bills. Andre is a former colleague and close friend of Wally's. Once a successful theater director, Andre all but disappeared from the country and the two haven't seen each other for years. Stories have been circulating about Andre's recent strange behaviour and emotional instability. A friend insists that Wally meet with Andre, who was discovered weeping against a wall after viewing an Ingmar Bergman movie. "He had been seized by a fit of ungovernable crying," Wally explains, "when the character played by Ingrid Bergman had said, 'I could always live in my art, but never in my life.'"

Andre appears excited and refreshed as the two men sit down to dinner in a fancy restaurant. After pleasantries are exchanged, he begins to tell Wally stories about his travels to Tibet, northern Scotland and the Sahara, relating his strange experiences abroad while Wally sits in awe, never quite knowing what to add. Indeed, for the first half of the film, Wally sits nearly silent, offering only small bits of insight and trivia that cannot possibly be latched to Andre's wild tales of being buried alive and traveling with 40 non-English speaking Polish thespians into a forest as an exercise to rediscover his interest in the theater.

Eventually, however, the crux of the conversation comes about and the playing field is evened. Andre has been desperately trying to figuratively wake himself up from what he views as a life of tedium and mechanical action. Wally opens up more and more as they discuss themes of loneliness, love, art, existentialism and what it means to live a worthwhile life. The conversation flows eloquently and the men seem to always be dancing close to a series of great discoveries before they move on to new territory. Small, humourous bits of irony are injected when the waiter approaches at certain moments. The conversation feels free-flowing, but there is a precise attention to detail that envelopes its audience.

What makes the conversation especially fascinating are the obvious character differences, both in their physical appearances and their thoughts on existence. Wally enjoys his comfortable life. He likes a cold cup of coffee ready to sip when he wakes up in the morning. He enjoys his electric blanket and reading the autobiography of Charlton Heston. Andre believes that humanity is becoming too attached to its comforts and that they are becoming pushovers politically as a result. As his arguments bring Wally out of his shell, we admire Wally for his honesty and simple way of expressing himself, while Andre's observations continue to amaze.

Andre's stories put the film on the level of many an action blockbuster. His dialogue is delivered with the focus and attention to detail of a storyteller that has an entire room hanging on his every word. Images of his descriptions leap to the mind and build an impression of Andre's world better than special effects ever could because they are presented with the passionate belief of a man who has just found religion. The film's screenplay was pieced together by the men based on conversations the two shared in life and recorded. Beginning with a 1,500 page script, the film was carefully pared down to its essential themes by Shawn, Gregory and Malle.

"My Dinner with Andre" is as current in its exploration of human connection today as it was 30 years ago, and that's a scary fact to admit. So many of us get older and find it nerve-wracking or even a waste of time to sit down with another person and have an honest and direct conversation about how we are living our lives, more than likely because we're afraid we're not getting it right. Life is the most fascinating and most important topic of conversation there is.

Perhaps we are afraid of talking about life because it is inevitably entangled with the subject of death. The modest Wally observes: "If I understood it correctly, I think Heidegger said that if you were to experience your own being to the full, you would be experiencing the decay of that being toward death as part of your experience." If we are able to live only in art, our guaranteed fate in life will take us by surprise, slowly and tragically. There is no shame in trying to understand it.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Great Film
Bought this a present, the DVD edition was amazing, delivered fast and it's a great film, highly recommend it if you like the subtle quirky films

Published 4 months ago by Ol blue eyes

5.0 out of 5 stars Tres Bon!
"My Dinner with Andre" is my all-time favorite film. I watch this movie often, each time of which I notice another layer of meaning. Read more

Published on July 18 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars I want to have a conversation like this
I have not seen this DVD so my review pertains only to the movie itself.

This is one of my favorite films of all time. Read more

Published on April 25 2004 by stu

1.0 out of 5 stars DP!=DVD
Full Screen. Does that say full screen? What is the point of a DVD if not to deliver the full quality of the original print. Read more

Published on April 5 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Quoting ebert..."its very hard to nail down great movies"
Give it a try: you'll either giveup in 15 minutes; or would get hooked to it. Like a evening breeze of a warm day, let the movie conversation flow easily... Read more

Published on Feb 15 2004 by Sandeep Gupta

5.0 out of 5 stars Based on review of screenplay.
I will someday have to watch this film on DVD or video, but in the meantime I have read or reread the screenplay three times. Read more

Published on Jan 31 2004 by TheodoreStreet

1.0 out of 5 stars DVD = bootleg quality
yeah, the rating is for the DVD video transfer - *not* the movie itself.

you've gotta be a sap to actually purchase this DVD. Read more

Published on Jan 19 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars A dialogical journey into aliveness.....
Two men who haven't met for a long while sit down and talk--about life. One, Wally, starts the conversation with a thoughtless, "You look great! Read more

Published on Jan 16 2004 by Craig Chalquist, PhD, author o...

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite movies
I first saw "My Dinner With Andre" when I was involved in theatre. The director I was working with was much like Andre Gregory, who had worked with Grotowski. Read more

Published on Dec 26 2003 by Damon Navas-Howard

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking film that will expand your thinking
First saw this movie when it came out. Went to see it with a group of friends. After the movie we went to an all night coffee shop and talked about the film and how it related... Read more

Published on Jun 11 2003

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