My Dinner with My Dinner with Andre

Found myself on my own last night for a few hours, a rare occurrence believe it or not. So I picked up some Chinese food and settled down into a movie night as I was pretty fatigued from a full day of work chased by mowing the back yard in early-April 85-degree Texas weather.

I settled on a flick that’s been on my radar for many years. And by that I mean I noticed it once a year, said, “I really should give that a watch,” and then promptly forgot about it. The movie in question was My Dinner with Andre, a 1981 “avant garde” film. I put avant garde in quotes because while the phrase generally connotes something unusual or experimental, I think most civilians regard it as, well, crappy and unwatchable. My Dinner with Andre is unusual and experimental, but if you have a bookish mind, a mind for ideas, I think it just might appeal to you.

(After all, most of Hollywood’s production since 2015 or so have been crappy and unwatchable, but we don’t label those flicks as avant garde.)

Anyway, the movie’s running time is 1 hour and 52 minutes. Aside from a few minutes of introductory setup and a minute or so of concluding wrap up, the entirety of the movie is a conversation at a table in a restaurant between two men, Wallace and Andre. Both are in the arts – Wallace is an unsuccessful struggling playwright, and Andre is/was a theater director, currently returning after a several-year hiatus to discover what that something is he feels is lacking within himself.

It would be impossible to summarize this conversation, but I found myself riveted. It flows along many intertwining currents. After some pleasantries and re-acquainting verbal dances, the talk delves into art, the theater, experimental theater, globe travelling for new experiences, and before we realize it we are discussing, and eventually debating, philosophy, existentialism, the individual as one and as part of society, spirituality, and what it means to become an authentic human being. Heidegger comes up, physics and math comes up somewhat peripherally, as does the Little Prince and Saint-Exupery, synchronicity, messages from the future, and the fight for meaning and transcendence when the damn mailbox is overflowing with bills. With all that on the menu, I was hooked.

The movie was written by, well, Wallace and Andre, who play fictionalized versions of themselves and references real people and situations in their talk. At the end of the conversation, the restaurant has emptied, and I felt a little empty myself. And after the last minute of Wallace’s monologue (he narrates the beginning and ending), I actually had goose bumps up and down my arms, particularly the last four words he speaks.

A+, but a strict warning that it is not for the average; prerequisite in self-dissatisfaction and an openness to engage and evaluate new ideas is a definite requirement.

And for the record, I feel that, like just about everything in life, the real answer lies somewhere between the extremes. Were I to place myself with these two men at this table in this restaurant, I’d probably fall somewhere around 60% Andre and 40% Wallace.