What thrill ride cinematic experience do we have for this week's Cinema Saturday to finish off the month of April?
This week's movie is about two guys who sit down to have dinner to discuss the nature of theater and the meaning of life and....
Uh.... that's it.
That's it?
Yep!
From 1981, it's My Dinner With Andre.
My Dinner with Andre is directed by Louis Malle and written by and starring André Gregory and Wallace Shawn as fictionalized versions of themselves sharing a conversation at Café des Artistes in Manhattan.
Café des Artistes? This sounds pretentious as fuck.
Careful, you may be right.
Through his narration, we learn that struggling playwright Wally dreads having dinner with his old friend Andre. Wally hasn't seen Andre since 1975 when Andre walked away from this career as a theater director to embark on an extended spiritual midlife crisis. And now Andre invites Wally to dinner and will probably want to talk about everything that happened to him on his "journey".
And Café des Artistes? Wally can't afford that. Hell, his girlfriend is working double shifts as a cashier at a neighborhood grocery store to help make the rent.
Spoiler: Andre will pick up the check. Well, that's nice of him.
Especially after Andre tortures Wally with interminable tales of his travels to Poland, the Sahara and Scotland, his interactions with avant-garde actors and directors and some weird cult thing that involved being naked and simulating being buried alive. Andre says he needed to do all of these things to get out of the rut he was in and learn how to be human.
Wally calls bullshit on that. What Andre did to just drop out of his responsibilities and explore the world is just not possible for most people while Wally looks for pleasure in simple ordinary things. Like a really good cup of coffee or a nice blanket.
Andre counters that focusing too much on comfort can be dangerous and what passes for life in modern New York is more like a dream than reality.
Then Wally counterpoints that.... Are you drifting off to sleep yet? Well, so was I but hang in there. We're almost through this.
Then Wally counterpoints that his rational and scientific perspective cannot accept the more mystical aspects of Andre's stories.
And then Andre says something about that and Wally replies and so forth and so on.
The restaurant has cleared out with Wally and Andre left as the only customers and the staff are waiting to close up the place.
The two men part on good terms and since Andre paid for dinner, Wally has some money to spring for a cab ride home. As he passes all the familiar places he sees every damn day, Wally narrates that he feels a deeper connection to the world and when he gets home to his girlfriend, he will tell her all about his dinner with Andre.
I had heard about My Dinner With Andre for years and it's reputation as an innovative film. I was intrigued by the premise of an entire movie set around two guys having a conversation over dinner. So when TCM ran this movie a few months ago, I saw an opportunity to see what the fuss was all about.
On one hand, I don't get it. The more Andre prattles on about his existential journey and his spiritual awakening, the more I need to forcibly pry my eyeballs open. Andre is so full of himself as he extols the epiphanies he experienced in his travels.
On the other hand, I do get it. For Andre, the creation of art is life and that is fundamentally different perspective from Wally who sees the creation of art as work. Wally represents a pragmatic view of just trying to get by and make a living at it.
That's not to say Andre doesn't have something worthwhile to say and Wally concedes in the closing narration that his encounter with Andre has expanded how he sees the world around him.
Still, not everyone can do what Andre did and just drop out to explore the existential questions of what is life and what is art. Wally represents the majority of us who have bills to pay.
The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department
Wally is Wallace Shawn who was Vizzini in The Princess Bride (1987) ("Inconceivable!) and the voice of Rex in the Toy Story franchise since 1995. Most recently, Wallace Shawn has portrayed Dr. John Sturgis in Young Sheldon.
My Dinner With Andre is not something I would recommend for everyone. It is an interesting experiment in film but ultimately, it is little more than a movie about two guys who sit down to have dinner and talk about life and art and... you know, stuff.
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