My Dinner with Andre (1981)

Review:

Never have I seen a movie so simple and eloquent as “My Dinner with Andre.” Even with a plot so simple that it can be inferred from the title, this movie is a challenging and wondrous movie about everything. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie about everything that wasn’t also an allegory or parable in some fashion. “My Dinner with Andre” is not a parable or even a story – it is a conversation; one filled with life, death and all the ambiguity that lay in-between.

Wallace Shawn, portraying a semi-fictional version of himself, meets Andre Gregory, also portraying a semi-fictional version of himself, for dinner at an upscale New York City restaurant. Wallace is an unsuccessful playwright and Andre is a former theater director who has long since dropped out from the theater scene. Wallace has not seen Andre in five years. He made this dinner date at the behest of a mutual friend who had recently seen Andre crying in the street after watching an Ingmar Bergman film. Knowing his friend must be going through hard times, Wallace is naturally nervous about this dinner date.

That is the set up for the film and all that information is delivered in about the first five minutes. The rest of the movie is their conversation. At first, their discussion is dominated by Andre’s soliloquies about his travels abroad. He has worked a theater workshop in the woods of Poland, he has invited Tibetan monks to live with his family, he has participated in a ritual that simulated the experience of being buried alive – all apparently in the pursuit of what it means to be truly alive. It seems Andre has been seeking unfettered experience as a way to cope with the inescapable fact of death.

Wallace, when he finally gets a chance to speak, conveys a very different view of what it means to live. He believes that to have a cup of coffee in the morning that has no cockroach floating in it is the essence of life and enough to be happy for. Essentially, “My Dinner with Andre” debates didactic opinions on the best way to live. Andre represents the seeker, a visionary who believes behind all the madness and death of the world that there is something purely beautiful that we can and should seek out. Wallace on the other hand thinks we should live for what is present, appreciating what we have. He is a proponent for the mundane happiness in simply being.

"My Dinner with Andre" sounds like it could be a tiring exercise in pure pretension. Not so. It speaks thoughtfully to the conflicting question in every human mind: is this it or is there something more? And wisely, "My Dinner with Andre" ends with no concise answer.

Rating:

On a scale of one to Casablanca, this film is a "Crimes and Misdemeanors"

Rationalization

Thought provoking and actively searching the nature of our existence, "My Dinner with Andre" thinks on such a big scale it could only be conveyed in one very long, simple scene. I was very moved by this film and found myself thinking about it for many days after seeing it. If thats not the sign of a good film, I don't know what is.