Review of My Dinner with Andre (1981) by Eric F — 04 Jul 2009

For almost three months, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory recorded lengthy conversations a few times a week. Over the course of the next year, the material was shaped into a script. Shawn and Gregory would play "themselves", or atleast versions of their personalities, and simply shoot a film that involves nothing but a conversation. The action sequences here are the waiters coming by with the next course - it's nothing but largely unbroken conversation about philosophies and the intricacies of life, the ways of finding oneself, the ways of finding "truth". You don't necessarily need to leave the comfort of your own home to find "truth" and "meaning", there's no sabbaticals necessary for self-discovery. Perhaps, for you, the meaning of life is the pleasure of waking up to last night's coffee sans dead cockroaches.

Wally is a struggling playwright and actor. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth as the son of the editor of New Yorker - as he grew up, all he had to worry about was art and culture. Now, all he worries about is money. He's about to sit down and have dinner with a man he's been avoiding for years, the successful theater director Andre Gregory. Gregory's recent history is largely a mystery - there have been rumors of him "traveling", and recently he had been seen crying because of a line spoken in Ingmar Bergman's "Autumn Sonata". Because Wally is dreading the evening, he decides that the simple way out is to ask a lot of questions, keep a smile on his face, and get through the night as quickly as possible.

The early moments of the conversation are precisely that. Wally asks Andre, who initially comes off as a bit of a snob, questions about his recent travels. Andre tells him stories of adventures everywhere from Tibet to Poland, from being buried alive to encountering people who persuade bugs to not eat their crops. Wally's only words in response are "wow", "gosh", and the like. Then, at some point, about forty minutes into the film, Wally finally has something to say. He disagrees with the notion that one needs these extremities to "find themselves" and "live in the moment". His argument is that some people don't have that luxury, and it doesn't make them less of a person if they can't travel to the highest peak of Mount Everest. Wally defends the life of the bourgeois, and argues that it's no less fulfilling than the life of the radical adventure-seeker that Andre has painted himself to be.

This is a film that's obviously not for everybody, and when I say "not for everybody" I mean not for most. On the most plain and unsophisticated level - this IS a two hour movie that involves nothing but a conversation over dinner. While I did find the first forty minutes incredibly dull, I was sucked in when Wally started getting words in and the focus of the film shifted from Andre's adventures to the debate between the two intellectuals. The last hour of the film is profound, moving, and incredibly stimulating - a level of involvement that you'll never see in most pictures. Whether or not you have the patience is up to you, but those who have an interest in philosophy will certainly find the film incredibly rewarding.