My Dinner With André

Did ya ever watch a movie where two men talk over dinner for nearly two hours? 

My Dinner With André is this movie.

This is probably the least cinematic movie I have ever seen, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.  There is a mesmerising quality to this film.  It stars Wallace Shawn as a fictionalised version of himself, Wally and André Gregory as André, as a fictionalised version of himself too.  In it, Wally is coerced into having a meal with an old friend, a friend whom he doesn't really want to see.  A friend he can't be bothered with and throughout the movie André talks, and tells his stories, and Wally becomes more and more engaged with the conversation.  

See André is a theatre director who has put his job behind him and went on a “find-yourself” type adventure.  He went in search of more from life.  André witnessed theatre in its basic form amongst native customs and people and proceeds to tell this story to Wally, and explain how it has fundamentally changed him.

Wally is a playwright and is locked in on his own habits and routine.  He is a character who has settled with who he has become.  Throughout André’s many stories, the movie is about 1 hour 50 and André Gregory does most of the talking (it is a dinner with him after all), we see Wally react and wrestle with some of André’s observations on life and society.

This movie places us in the shoes of Wally, listening to André and challenges us.  Have we become like him? Are we set in our ways?  Are we comfortable?  Too comfortable?  Are you mindlessly going through life?  Moments when they talk about an electric blanket and how it keeps us warm so all we think about is how warm and comfortable we are.  André says that we all have one of these, whatever it may be, that numbs us.  Numbs our mind and not reflect on how we are.  Are we passive in this world?  Are we without purpose? Am I?

My favourite topic in this conversation is when André describes how we have regimented our lives into an order that has no room for disorder or chaos.  It continues from the electric blanket and comfort discussion.  André at one point says that comfort can lull you into dangerous tranquillity.  Throughout the conversation he drops ideas, like how we are no longer affected by the seasons. I love that idea.  Humans have changed their surroundings to them and are not experiencing the world they are in.  The dinner conversation discusses how we have built our comfort and that that has led us to being bored and trapped and have nothing of worth in this world.  Somehow this movie about two people having dinner has journeyed to a point where real existential questions are being asked and discussed in a truly thought provoking way.

The movie is full of ideas and thoughts and stories meant to make us, the audience think.  Movies don’t always require a brain but modern cinema rarely thinks you have one.  So seeing a movie where you are challenged or left questioning your life is a real treat.

See I find myself agreeing with André and his perspective on things but I end up being just like Wally.  I have become everything the movie was saying.  No matter what was presented to Wally he went home, in a taxi, staring out the window at the shops.  Has anything changed after this dinner? Was Wally challenged during their meal but what was said, what happened at the dinner table made any lasting impact on him?  Did it on me?

All I know is I watched two men talk for nearly two hours and was mesmerised.