My Dinner With Andre is a film that holds to the belief that the best art doesn’t give people the answers but gets them asking the right questions.
Louise Malle’s 1981 masterpiece, and that is exactly what it is, is a film written by its stars Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory as fictionalised versions of themselves. It is a film that allows the viewer to sit in on an evening meal between two friends.
Wallace, or ‘Wally’ as he is referred to in the film, is on his way to have dinner with his old friend Andre. Who he has not been keen on since Andre left the theatre in 1975. As Wally is on his way to the restaurant where he is to meet Andre, we hear his personal reflections as he is making his way across New York.
The one thing that sticks out during this opening monologue is how Wally despondently realizes that his life has been about making money more than it has been about making art the older that he’s gotten.
When he and Andre sit down, Andre begins to tell Wally of all the things that he’s experienced since he left the theatre in 1975. Such things include; going to Poland and working with a group of actors in the forest; travelling to the ecological commune of Findhorn; journeying to the Sahara Desert; and going to an estate to take part in a ritual that involves being buried alive.
Andre tells Wally that his life had gotten into a rut whilst he was in New York, and that he had to get away from it. Andre conveys to Wally how the things that he’s been a part of during his time away have allowed him to understand what’s going on in the world today as well as what’s wrong with the people who inhabit it.
Andre’s experiences have allowed him to understand the type of prison that New York, and by extension the whole world, has become. Wally listens intently but soon offers Andre his perspective on the whole matter. Though he accepts that there’s some truth in what Andre says, he’s resistant to take it as gospel. Putting forward the fact that most people cannot just get up and leave to go and find themselves the way Andre did.
Wally then asserts the fact that he doesn’t need to travel the world to experience what Andre has gone through. That he can experience it right in New York, and that he can take pleasure in the little things like a cup of coffee or his electric blanket. Although Andre accepts Wally’s point of view, he intimates that he thinks this preoccupation with comfort is what’s killing the human spirit.
They passed most of the night away with conversation, and by the end of the film they look around and saw that most of the people in the restaurant had left. Andre pays for the whole dinner, leaving Wally to treat himself to a taxi home.
As he looks out the window, he reflects on how he felt a deeper connection to the places that he went to throughout his life in New York, telling the viewer that he would tell his wife about his dinner with Andre.
My Dinner with Andre is ostensibly a film about two friends catching up after some time apart. One friend reluctant to do so and the other not so reluctant. But, as with most great pieces of art, the film is about much more than is initially advertised the deeper you look into it.
One thing you can really appreciate about My Dinner with Andre is the films depiction of a universal experience that we’ve all gone through. The experience of having a conversation turn unexpectedly deep but leaves you feeling better off for having had it.
The beauty that lies in the conversation between Wally and Andre is in the fact that there’s no sense of imbalance between the two. They both stand on equal footing to one another when articulating their beliefs about modern society. This was great because it accepts the validity of both their views without giving one a precedent over the other as the more valid view.
Wally’s more grounded, almost Zen-like appreciation of the smaller things in life and his compassion for the common man who can’t get away from life in the modern world is presented with just as much weight as Andre’s more spontaneous, lofty, and virulent sentiments towards life and the state of the modern world in general.
This more balanced presentation towards the attitudes of both characters gives the viewer an option when it comes to considering which side of the spectrum they come under, Andre’s or Wally’s. Or perhaps it gives them the opportunity to decide for themselves on what they believe the correct attitude towards modern-day life is.
Something that is very striking about the story is that the conversation evolves into a discussion on some of the deeper aspects of life, and it comes from two men who are presented as common men. Not high-powered men of influence who the public are tricked into the thinking are the people who should be having these conversations because only they can have them.
The co-writers of this film did a wonderful job at having this existential discussion on society between two men of the theatre, seeing as how art and entertainment has always reflected the socio-political environment it came from.
But, all of this is only made possible because of one thing, the dialogue. For a modern audience that is used to the bombastic showdowns put out by the likes of Marvel, or the multi-million dollar-budgeted films constantly produced by Disney, it would be very hard to sell them a movie that takes place mostly in one location with only a handful of characters with no effects and no spectacular climax if you didn’t have good dialogue.
And that’s exactly what My Dinner with Andre had. Two hours of excellently crafted dialogue that never loses its momentum. In fact, it only builds as the movie goes on, so much so that one forgets that not much is happening other than two men conversing with one another. That’s the level of craftsmanship we are dealing with when it comes to the dialogue of this film.
Andre’s account of being ritually buried alive is so well written that you don’t need a flashback scene to have a feeling of what such an experience would have been like because Andre’s description of what it was like was so beautifully put together that a flashback scene may have diminished the effect of his recounting it.
When it comes to the dialogue this theme of balance presents itself once again. The tone and vernacular of the two characters work well with each other. It’s not a lofty flowery discussion about the abstract, nor is it a cold and rational discourse on what we can taste, see, hear, touch, and smell. It’s nicely centred in the middle.
Andre is able to paint a hopeful and inspiring picture of what he thinks life should be and what it could be, whilst Wally articulates a much more rational/ reasonable description of what already is. To borrow from Greek mythology Andre’s words, have a Dionysian quality to them. One that embraces the chaos and spontaneity of life, whereas Wally’s words have an Apollonian quality, emphasising the more logical and serene aspects of existence.
It was this ability to differentiate between the way the two men spoke and viewed things that led to such an enthralling two hours of conversation. And the two men’s varying views on many things once again brings us back to the beauty of the fact that the film does not force the viewer to look at the world a certain way by bashing them over the head with a particular set of messages. Rather it affirms the validity of both men’s worldviews whilst simultaneously acknowledging the pros and cons of both of Wally and Andre’s ideas.
My Dinner with Andre is a film that should resurface amongst the likes of cinephiles, general movie goers, and the thinking man because it forces the viewer to think about the state of their own lives and the state of the world on a macrocosmic level. It forces them to think about whether they give credence to the romantic sentiments of Andre or the realist beliefs of Wally, or whether they accept both.
In a world where movies prioritise spectacle, which does have a place in the cinema, a film like My Dinner with Andre has the potential to stand out. Though it is cinema, it still falls under the category of art. As stated before, the best art doesn’t give people the answers, it gets them asking the right questions.