My Dinner with Andre

MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ (1981) ****

Reviewed 5/22/99

Every once in a while I like to catch My Dinner with André because it makes me think, and the movie's recent re-release let me do just that. It is that uncommon film that overflows with ideas. Some will find it elitist with its references to Heidegger and Breton and Schopenhauer, or ridiculous with its apparent valuation of New Age/counterculture-hippie adventures, but open-minded individuals will take it for what it is -- a cautionary tale of late-20th Century life in the Western world.

Wallace Shawn and André Gregory began keeping records of their conversations over a period of months. They then turned it into a screenplay and enlisted Louis Malle to direct. The "story" is incredibly simple. Two men of the New York theater scene get together for dinner and have a conversation. Unfortunately, this setup of simply watching two men talk for nearly two hours will turn off most potential viewers who think that movies are only supposed to work a certain way. Those who dismiss My Dinner with André on its minimalistic premise will miss one of the most stimulating experiences in all of cinema.

For the most part, André Gregory dominates the conversation with tales of his journeys all over the globe. Shawn, at first just trying to pass the time, slowly becomes more engrossed, and soon the two are discussing the illusory nature of Western culture and its oxymoronic civility. Wallace Shawn is our stand-in with the presumption that most of us do not have André Gregory's experience and world views. While the film is obviously on Gregory's (the intellectual liberal's) side, it does not leave his points uncritiqued. Shawn's discomfiting reaction shots warn us not to trust Gregory entirely, but to examine what he says for ourselves. Not only that, but Shawn, Gregory, and Malle are certainly aware of the surrealistic nature of the experiences Gregory describes, which in themselves make his ideas questionable. My Dinner with André mentions Brecht, and the film upholds a Brechtian effect, keeping us entertained but mindful.

Gregory asserts that we live through force of habit today and so are not really living at all, and that we seek comfort at the expense of identifying with others. While never mentioning the word, he points to capitalism as one of the prime culprits. When Shawn finally rebuts, reclaiming the comfort of his electric blanket, he is clearly taking the conservative point of view, not just in trying to maintain the status quo, but citing scientific verification as reality and sounding not unlike an Ayn Rand Objectivist (the misguided Rand would have disavowed the conservative label). Gregory replies, not just in claiming that there is a very real problem but there are solutions, albeit difficult ones. Despite the dialectical approach, no thesis is intended here.

The film is essentially a metaphysical and (less so) an epistemological inquiry, but it is far from dry and lecturing. Gregory delivers us very powerful images through the stories of his quixotic travels, and Shawn provides great comic relief from his incredulous reactions to both the banality and the absurdity (though not necessarily untruth) of the examples he brings up to support his points. While keeping our focus on two men talking does not give Louis Malle a great deal of stylistic leeway, he does not aim for anything more than being unobtrusive. Malle lines up a parade of one and two shots cutting between medium and close ups. Upon occasion, Malle will have the camera zoom into extreme close up (often as background sounds fade), magnifying the intensities of Gregory's and Shawn's perspectives.

Some have said that My Dinner with André would be better off as a book, a book-on-tape, or a play, but I disagree. The written word alone does not communicate as well as a voice, and a voice alone does not communicate as well as a face attached to that voice, and film gives us intimacy with that face and voice far better than the stage. Film puts us right at the table, which the other mediums do not. And when we are through with our dinner with André, our perspectives on reality may have changed, or at the very least, André will have put us to thinking about them.