Review of My Dinner with Andre (1981) by Tom B — 06 Aug 2010

Watched with my sons last night. One of them said "This movie has the all answers to everything in the world." I am always grateful when a work connects us the way this one did. The shared emotional moment that echoes against all such moments in the past, and charges the present with realizations and laughter, until the room crackles.

I saw it first many years ago at Cinema V. I was inspired then, am doubly inspired now. Amazing to see the things they talk about in this film have proliferated so much, that the glimpse of ideas percolating in 1981 are now pandemic and spreading.

I like to believe some variation on the idea that there is room for materialism as well as imagination, and that we will work it out. I like to believe it because it seems some of us do and live it, pockets of worlds within the world.

I think one thing that brings this little movie with legs up to a next-level experience is the overwhelming amount of love that it inspires. For the characters on screen, the ones in the stories, the ones we feel ourselves to be, for life itself, our lives, and being aware in those lives, and seeing new life within us grow and expand the more we allow our feelings to guide us.

To see from the heart, as I think Andre says. A new favorite for me, rediscovered. Perhaps the hidden influence under my wings all along, the forgotten wellspring of emotions and ideas that never left me alone.

A perfect film.