My Dinner with Andre

Rating:
Summary: Don't you wish you had friends like this?
Review: Where to begin? Two real people engaging in an ideosyncratic discussion about everything. Literally. From our modern, somnambulistic culture to artistic and personal freedom, My Dinner With Andre represents one of those conversations from the distant past which you can never quite forget. Every word and observation drips with latent meaning and insight; no fear of using audicious metaphors to make a point; a willingness to expose the soul. Those kinds of conversations may ultimately be more wind than fire, but through all the twists and turns of this conversation, and the self-absorbed pretension that sometimes overwhelms the moment, this movie has a lot to say. About life. About relationships. About death. And about whether we are alive or dead, awake or asleep, happy or unhappy, honest or fraudulent. I urge you to watch this--and then watch The Sixth Sense. Believe it or not, these movies tell a similar story about the world of zombies in which we live. Great film. (Don't listen to the comments about the quality of the conversion to DVD. It ain't great, but it doesn't need to be. This movie would eminently and desirably watchable even if it was shown on some snowy, UHF broadcast.)

Rating:
Summary: A unique, fascinating and intriguing coversation
Review: This is the tale of two different men; Andre, an avant-garde director, and Wally, a theatre actor and writer. They meet at a restaurant, and philosophise and discuss a variety of subjects. The majority of the dialogue is spoken by Andre. He is a far more loquacious and complex character than Wally. Wally is a laconic and soft-spoken guy, who enjoys a simple life with his wife. His epitome of bliss is drinking a cold cup of coffee left from the night before, without finding a cockroach in it. Andre is an intense ponderer. He tells Wally the stories of his experiences travelling around the world, from his time spent in far flung places such as Scotland, Poland, India and Tibet.

Andre gives the impression he is exaggerating at times. Is he fabricating some of the tales? He could be. Especially the ones where he claims he has seen monsters and weird creatures. The premise of two men conversing for 110 minutes at a dinner table is not going to be the most appealing film, but this film holds your attention and intrigues the viewer. You become involved with Andre's musings somehow, and just as fascinated as Wally is. A great piece of arresting cinema.

Rating:
Summary: Quoting ebert..."its very hard to nail down great movies"
Review: Give it a try: you'll either giveup in 15 minutes; or would get hooked to it. Like a evening breeze of a warm day, let the movie conversation flow easily. Play..Pause...think...rewind...think...rewatch....reflect.
Its not going to change your life, but would defintely effect your view about it.

Rating:
Summary: DP!=DVD
Review: Full Screen. Does that say full screen? What is the point of a DVD if not to deliver the full quality of the original print.
All involved with this great film [especially its fans] deserve something better than the VHS quality of the cassettes that routinely go missing from libraries. But this is not any better. Letterbox this movie. It is high time.

Rating:
Summary: but no stars for the dvd
Review: This is my favorite movie of all time. Period. You can sit inon the most interesting conversation ever and I've done it many times,every time finding myself thinking of different things, contemplating my own life and wondering about how crazy Andre actually is and how seriously to take his ideas about how human life came to an end a few decades ago, leaving us all robots in search of some twinge of real feeling. But the dvd is so bad I suspected it was a bootleg. When the camera switches from Andre to Wally the color completely changes. It's all grainy as if recorded on bad tape off a badly receiving tv. At one point a little white hair appears and vacillates on the lower screen for oh about 30 minutes. Are they kidding? There needs to be a new edition of this great movie, and those of us who bought this sham of a version should be allowed to trade it in. Here is a film critiquing the falseness of what our modern life has become: fine, but I don't need an object lesson costing me $20. Out of respect for the sublime Louis Malle, put out a new version!

Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal movie, horrible transfer
Review: My Dinner With Andre is a brilliant, difficult movie.

A lot of people are turned off by this film because it's mainly one extended scene of two unglamorous people talking about existence. But what a conversation, and what a scene! Andre Gregory's bizarre, surreal story and his catharsis about the nature of modern life that comes from it is powerful stuff, but the real punch comes from Wallace Shawn, our Everyman, and his reaction to it. It's a shame that so many can't watch more than 10 minutes of this movie, because it is ultimately Shawn, at the end, who speaks their thoughts.

MDWA demands your attention for two hours, which is no easy task, because there is no real narrative in the traditional sense. It also demands multiple viewings, because it is rich with subtle detail, and there's a lot to take in. Notice, for instance, the continual references to the Holocaust, culminating in Gregory's account of his friend's theory about the city-as-modern-concentration-camp. And as you watch these two actors play, ostensibly, themselves, you wonder how much of the film is true and how much is a carefully constructed narrative. It's a great mystery, one that I prefer unsolved.

Kudos also go to the director, the great Louis Malle, whose control is so precise that you almost forget you're watching a movie as opposed to two people just talking. It's a reminder of how the great directors are the ones who can do so much with so little. You'll never look at a blockbuster the same way again.

The reason I can't give this film 5 stars is that the video transfer is HORRIBLE. The color is often off, and the sound is mediocre at best. Hopefully someone will save and restore this gem of a film.

Do yourself a favor and SEE THIS MOVIE. You'll probably complain about doing it, but you'll feel immensely gratified afterward.

Rating:
Summary: I want to have a conversation like this
Review: I have not seen this DVD so my review pertains only to the movie itself.

This is one of my favorite films of all time. I can watch it over and over again and it remains enjoyable.

The entire movie consists of two old friends having a conversation over dinner. Wallace Shawn plays Wallace Shawn, a struggling playwrite who acts to pay his bills. He is a realist, but he has an unshakable faith in the power and importance of art. Andre Gregory plays Andre Gregory, a once successful director who had worked with Shawn in the past, but who has since had an apparent breakdown. Shawn has heard rumors about his old friend's erratic behavior.

Shawn is wary of the dinner. How crazy is Andre? Why does he want to meet after all of these years. He gently prods Andre with some general questions, but once he gets Andre started, there is no stopping him. He had had a breakdown - or a crisis, or an epiphany depending on how one looks at it. Andre had realized that he was not really living, but, rather, sort of existing in a semi-consious state. He looked around and saw that everyone was doing the same thing. He also lost his faith in the ability of art to communicate anything. This crisis is the result of his reaction to post-modernity in general. He proceeds to tell Wallace the extremes to which he went to try to feel like he was really experiencing life again. He traveled all over the world, experimented with all sorts of mysticism and unconventional thought, and developed a conscious, almost child-like view of the world.

I will not paraphrase the entire conversation. Wallace Shawn does get his rebuttal, and it steers the conversation in a cryptic direction. The conclusion, or lack thereof, of the argument is challenging, if not down-right depressing. This aspect of the film is rarely mentioned. Although Shawn leaves exhilarated by the conversation he has had, that conversation has left the audience in a quandry. The movie should instigate some interesting conversations of your own.

The script is just wonderfull. The two men taped many of their conversations and then edited them up and made a script out of it. Great idea that I am surprised is not used more often. The result is complete naturalism. Malle is reserved and delicate in his direction. A must for anyone who likes intelligent cinema - or simply craves a good conversation. Have that conversation vicariously through this splendid film.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece! - The best movie of the past 25 years
Review: I just finished this movie, and I feel like I need to simply get a few thoughts down before my head hits my pillow. I didn't know what to expect entering My Dinner With Andre - after all, it is a movie about two guys who have dinner in a restaurant and talk the whole time. But from the moment that the goofy-looking, awkward Wallace Shawn lumbers down a New York street and we hear his voice-over, I knew that something more was taking place in this movie. What it was, I had no idea.

There are no character names; there is no 'plot;' Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, both prominent actors/playwrights of New York, meet after not having seen each other for years and they shoot the breeze. I learned that it's not as extemporaneous as I originally had imagined - Shawn and Gregory got together, recorded hours of their conversations, and then compiled a script based on them. The 'restaurant' is actually a defunct hotel, the waiters and barkeepers all actors. But there's a transcendence to it all, as the men sit and chat (mostly the powerful, lively Andre Gregory doing the talking), food being brought out to them.

What heightens the power of the film is the setup that Wallace gives in the voice-over before their dinner: Andre, the man he meets, has been living a peculiar existence traveling all over the world, when he used to never want to leave his family. A friend of Wallace's saw Andre weeks before sobbing uncontrollably on the street because he was violently moved by a line in Bergman's Autumn Sonata. Like Wallace, we don't know what to expect in the very context of the dinner conversation.

Some of the things that Andre and Wallace discuss in this movie are so unimaginably crazy, so hauntingly horrific, that even the mental images that went through my head sent chills all the way through me. At one point, Andre tells of a strange rite with some friends on Halloween in which some of them let him through a strange process of being stripped completely naked, bathed, led through a field, lowered into a grave and buried alive for half an hour. Of course, I tell you this just to tantalize you, because to begin to even summarize what goes on in 110 perfect minutes would be impossible. Andre and Wallace discuss love, marriage, perception and reality, theology, and even the validity of their very statements. That they relate it with such grace and raw, real emotion makes me refuse to believe that this was staged in any way. It feels so natural.

I can't believe that something like this could actually make its way onto film, because it's such an amazing achievement for the art itself - in a way (especially in an early story that Andre tells about the nature of performance), seeing these men talk over dinner on film is the actual embodiment of a movie folding into itself in perpetuity. These men are real figures, play real figures in the film, recreate real conversations, and talk about reality in such a way that a heightened sense of awareness pervades the whole film. I didn't get up once, check the time - a few times I leaned closer to the screen because what was being said struck so close to me, hit home so hard, that I wanted to just be nearer to it. At one point, I gasped as Andre related the idea of New York, of working society being a new kind of concentration camp in which the prisoners make the prison, abide by the rules, and don't even realize it's holding them in. Whether I believe that or not is irrelevant - the fact that it's worked into a conversation like this is amazing.

The movie moves with grace between moments of hauntingly dark realizations, to soaring epiphanies of happiness and then back again. Much of the film may be discussion about the zombie-like nature of human existence, but there is a certain empowering quality to it all. My Dinner With Andre is not just about a conversation; it is about living; it is about life; it is about reality; it is about love; but most of all it is about the fact that we can all be happy with what we have right now, even with the infinite, scary knowledge that we receive over time. We meet a man who personnifies 'normalcy' with every gesture (Wallace), and yet there's a man who has done everything in his power to resist stasis (Andre). I left the movie with a changed perspective on each man, which I'm sure is what happened between them, too. More than a few times, I felt on the verge of tears watching this, and I felt it more than ever when Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie for Piano" began at the film's conclusion. One of the most transcendent works of music was chosen for one of the most transcendently great films I've ever seen. How cool.

I'm sorry. I'm just rambling at 2:15am, but I just thought it was impossible to not attempt to put into words what could be one of the single most important experiences I've ever had with a movie. I've seen a handful of movies that have drastically changed my thinking about a certain theme or notion. My Dinner With Andre might have just changed my life.

Rating:
Summary: Based on review of screenplay.
Review: I will someday have to watch this film on DVD or video, but in the meantime I have read or reread the screenplay three times.

Had the pleasure of taking a theatre arts course in Austin back in 95' where I was assigned Wally's long speech found on page 97 of the screenplay. I didn't have time to see the film or read the earlier bits so I could never quite understand where Wally was coming from when he started ranting about leaving a cold cup of coffee overnight and being really glad to find that there is no cockroach lying in it. Alas in my own life there was a job change and I had to quickly move out of Austin and drag a U-Haul trailer to Regina, Sask to start a new job...

So I never got to do the monologue in class but I kept the book figuring I should get around to reading the whole thing some day.

So recently I read it through and found so many similarities to my own life, spiritual journey after reading Andre's description of running around Polish forests, getting buried alive in Long Island, and travelling to the Sahara desert. It was about pushing the limit of your consciousness and seeing where it takes you. I was very impressed and the play seems more about coming to grips with your soul, or self, and in the end, after you go through the whole story, there's more philosophy and theology in this screenplay than I have ever encountered in any other work...and it wasn't a presented in a pedantic way. It was real and fantastic. It is really helpful in enabling each of us to formulate our philosophy. This is where my thinking is at after being so influenced by My Dinner with Andre:

1. What is your latest revelation?
The importance of circles.

Idea that life goes on yada yada.

2. How did you discover this idea?

I was reading up on various religions, trying to gain an understanding about the origin of religions.

Also I'm interested in the various shapes that are associated with the circle, everything from triangles, squares and pentagons up to the various angles and wedges that make up compasses, clocks and dart boards.

3. It must be fascinating to rediscover geometry and draw various shapes with a compass and protractor. What are your deeper reasons for looking at this?

I've been keeping journals, writing various entries, even saving emails and letters for the last fifteen years. as a way of building up a base of material for what I think will be a terrific book. The form of it changes. For a period I figured I'd be able to assemble a brilliant autobiography, but I get bogged down with too much information.

Also I find the process of writing it gets me worked up. You think it will be fantastic but you end up with so many details, only your mother or a few close friends who cared about you would find very interesting. You wouldn't be able to publish it unless you were famous, you were looking to exploit someone's private thoughts, like Courtney Love publishing Kurt Kobain's high school journals.

I discovered that if I stay away from the computer when I'm initially writing, and do a combination of writing and drawing I can slow the flood of experiences, and start thinking about the continuim, the flow of life and the possibilities.

I start by drawing a circle, a pentagon or some circle based shape using points on the circumference, and then I write out various events and experiences until I end up at the start of the circle.

I guess if you wanted to you could also look at your life as a set concentric circles. Of course, we're not like trees, in the sense that we don't have growth rings, but there is definitely a seasonal aspect to decisions and choices you make, as well as to the things that happen in your life.

4. Can you give an example?
An example is employment. Some people are always working, they've never had a gap that has been greater than a couple of months. In my case, if you look at a list of the jobs I've held, and you see that I'm not working, you might get worried and wonder if I'll ever find work again. But the worrying about has a negative effect on your confidence, which can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But if you look at your own experiences in terms of concentric circles, or as a person who is part of a universe, yet connected to various networks and organizations, then the reality of marketplace, the various trends and forces takes on a different picture. At least there's a context to your plight.

You can start to think about possible changes you can make, trying to find a match between your skills and the needs of potential employers, and if you can't think of an obvious position that someone is trying to fill, perhaps self-employment is a possible solution.

Also, you can take the view that you can change, go with flow, that even if you were reduced to living in a bed sit and eating Kraft dinner, perhaps there would be something more to your so-called empty life. You could add Dijon ketchup to it, as the Barenaked Ladies sing in that song If I Had a Million Dollars. Personally I would add canned salmon, some garlic and red peppers so I really don't need to buy Kraft dinner, except for the sensory experience of opening a box, pouring a predetermined quantity of macaroni into a saucepan. It's so easy, you don't have to think about how much pasta do I need, what ingredients to use.

5. What does making pasta, or let's say the whole business of cookery, have to do with life and your philosophy concerning circles?

For starters, there's a whole cycle of activity connected with cooking, from serving the food while it's hot to washing up. I don't like to leave dishes piling up, and I think the person who prepares a meal should also do the dishes. I hate washing up for someone who uses every pot and pan.

Another component to cookery is in the shopping and provisions you keep in your kitchen. Obviously there is a cycle of buying groceries and consuming the food before it goes bad. I also found that I enjoy running out of bread, or some ingredient. It forces you to consider the possibilities, for example baking pancakes or crepes, or eating porridge or cereal, so that helps you to be in less of rut.

I think when I was living in Saudi Arabia I became aware of the connection between my use of Q-tips and the number of days that I would stay in the country before at least having the relief of an annual vacation. You could start at the beginning of a year with a box of four or five hundred Q-tips and think to yourself if I make a dent in this thing then I can go home.

6. Surely you didn't spend your entire time thinking about going home -- that would drive me nuts? to be continued

Rating:
Summary: DVD = bootleg quality
Review: yeah, the rating is for the DVD video transfer - *not* the movie itself.

you've gotta be a sap to actually purchase this DVD.

my VHS copy picked up at the flea market is light years clearer and more distinct. DVD menus/chapters are a joke - everyone knows Fox/Lorber doesn't give a **** about its DVD products or customers.

as for Louis Malle's excellent film: when will Criterion, New Yorker Films, or Wellspring give this one - and others MIA such as "Ascenseur pour l'échafaud", "The Lovers", "Zazie dans le métro", "The Fire Within", "Murmur Of The Heart", "Lacombe Lucien", "Black Moon", and "May Fools" - top-notch anamorphic DVD transfers and supplemental features?

(laughable postscript: Paramount's Nov. 2003 anamorphic DVD release of "Pretty Baby" has several scenes cropped or censored - but they remain viewable in VHS pan & scan/cable TV broadcast versions of the film . . .)