Eric Stevenson
I honestly think that this is the most realistic movie I have ever seen in my entire life. I understand how a lot of people want movies to be realistic and this fits the bill perfectly. I do like it when a lot of movies try to be elaborate and have a lot going on. I still appreciate how a film or any work just plain cuts the bullcrap and presents everything the exact way it's supposed to be. It makes me realize that Wallace Shawn is in three of the best movies I've ever seen in my entire life! Even better, he briefly mentions something being "inconceivable", an interesting line that would become more relevant in his later movie "The Princess Bride". I know it was just a voice, but he was in the "Toy Story" movies.This movie tells the story of two guys who eat in a restaurant and talk. That is all the plot this movie has, seriously. It doesn't matter, because this film just comes off as so real to me. It's just nothing but two guys talking. It may be the best representation of a slice of life story I've ever seen in my whole life. It's even hard for me to even talk about this movie. For me to even mention it, I would probably say the exact same things said in this movie. The film itself even seems like a lengthy movie review itself at times, as they talk about stories and plots.The best conversation is probably when they're talking about the fortune cookies. They talk about what the true value of omens and philosophy in general. Every single person on Earth knows what it's like to eat dinner with someone. This is exactly how it goes out. Only about eleven minutes (or ten percent of the film) takes place outside them talking. I will admit that most people generally don't take that long to eat. Then again, I know talkative people. Please see one of the most sincere movies ever made! ****
ElMaruecan82
Have you ever caught bribes of such an interesting conversation you couldn't resist the temptation of listening, or even getting involved? Well, as soon as the titular André (Grégory playing himself) talks, we're natural-born listeners. You may think it's a minimalist experimental movie about two men talking, but it's all in the talk. And thanks to Louis Malle's astute directing and André's voice and body language, the words create a whole world and make everything happen in our minds. André, a producer, spent five years discovering the experimental theater in Poland, underground communities in Scotland and monasteries in Tibet, and finally he came back to share his experience with Wallace aka Wally, played by Wallace Shawn. And we visualize everything, the false burial, the hallucinations, the monk standing on his fingers. Despite the film's austere minimalism, what we've got is a super-power to communicate... on an epic level.Next to André, there's Wally, a struggling playwright, in an era where theater is obviously declining. These two men, who don't look the same, one elf-looking, another rather elegant and seductive, share the same love for theater, and certainly arts. They are also rational, literate men in their 30's/40's, and they don't have steady jobs, their revenues don't depend on physical efforts or regular wages, but on talents relying on inspirations, visions and other abstractions. So both Wally and André can afford the luxury of such a conversation, but they're also committed and have material responsibilities. Wally's wife (or girlfriend) must work on night to pay the bills, and André has a family. They're obviously caught between the daily urgency of life, and the eternal quest for its meaning that is so inherent to the world of Arts. Andre was found crying after watching Bergman's "Autumn Sonata" and was moved by Ingrid Bergman's confession that she couldn't only live in her Art, realizing that reality is a double-edged sword with alienating effects.Indeed, in the real world, we all are performers, incapable to express a genuine and sincere sentiment, incapable to question our happiness, beyond all the roles that life affects to us. It's no wonder, people deserted theaters since the world has turn into something like a theater… even a prison camp. But while these statements come later after a series of enumeration of André's five years of self-discovery, they could've turned the conversation into a one-sided performance if it wasn't for Wally's answer.Wally, who struck as a rather passive and fascinated listener, defensively and nervously retorts that there's something innately scary (and no less alienating) in these so-called quests, these obligations to go climb a mountain in order to find meanings to this or that, and then renounce to a simple comfort because it's meaningless. What is extraordinary is how visionary and relevant the conversation is, as if the world was as stressful in 1981 as now, 35 years later, and I couldn't decide which one I could relate to. I was like living my recent life in a movie, and it made me realize that I'm only 4 years younger than Shawn, and I'm in a somewhat similar existential crisis.I find this world extremely oppressive, and the Internet didn't help. Whenever I watched the news, it was always the same bullshit everywhere, the good guys vs. the bad guys, … and when I click on alternate news website, I get twice angrier, angry because we never hear them, and because it might be true. I don't even know if I should cry or laugh about that whole Trump campaign and the fact that we might have a Third World War very soon, … so, I promised myself to live in a bubble and never watch the news or anything that isn't fun and entertaining. I'd rather adopt the cowardly attitude of Wally, because I'm wise enough to know where I don't have the upper hand. I don't know."My Dinner With Andre" doesn't provide answers, but there will be hope as long as people will struggle to find any. I live in France where religion has became the Public Enemy #1, but I think it's again cold rationalism that inspired this intolerance, there's no good or bad spirituality, it's the very quest of transcendence that counts, not the result. The conversation is like those we have with our friends, when we try to solve the world's problem in one night, as long as such conversations will happen, that's enough to restore faith in humanity. Maybe André wasn't sure either about his solutions but it's a friendship story, and it's the mark of friend to unburden himself from his own angst and frustration and allow you to get relieved for some pain you'd have, through talking and communicating. And fittingly, after the dinner, instead of the subway, Wally took the cab and rediscovered some spots that all reminded him of childhood memories. The conversation had an effect, like Saint-Exupéry (whom André often mentioned): Wally started looking with his eyes instead of living mechanically.I can't express with the same quality of words how the film mirrored my own life. Was it a coincidence that the same day, my best friend called me, and urged to decide what to do with my life even if it had to jeopardize my marriage? Like Wally says, just because you read something in a fortune cookie doesn't mean it was addressed to you, but then he mentions the idea of someone traveling in a plane and reading in his horoscope that he shouldn't take it, which was exactly the subject of a screenplay I wrote (!)And André then says that it's only after envisaging the possibility of leaving his wife that he resurrected the passion, as if sometimes you need to take the risk to lose something to realize what it's worth. That night, I embraced my wife as tenderly as I could.
