BBD Comments:
Put this on the top of the list of “Movienight Picks So Unlikely to be Picked, and Equally Unlikely to Succeed, But Somehow Worked Perfectly.” I’m not sure how many other Picks (if any) go on this list, but I know this is the best of them.
I promised the Crew that I’d have something to admit in this review, so here it is at the top – I lied. Yup, it was a knee-jerk, childish mistake, but just like Lisa never knew I lost my virginity to her in Chicago, last night was the first time I’d ever seen ‘My Dinner with Andre’ despite my claim to the contrary. I suppose it is the ubiquity of this film on top ten list’s of theatrically-minded New Yorkers that made me lie to cover up my shame at never having seen this film, but lie I did. Though it is highly unlikely I will ever have the chance to admit the truth to Lisa, I wanted to come clean to my Movienight brethren. Wednesday night was my first time.
This film is so wrong for Movienight. Not only does nothing blow up, not only is it a slow burn, but it is the most long-winded film we have ever seen on the Stucco by far. Yet, somehow, it worked. It worked in a really big way.
Louis Malle faces the challenge of keeping a film based almost entirely around a dinner table consistently interesting and visually engaging. Shockingly, he succeeds with aplomb. ‘My Dinner with Andre’ feels both authentic and forced, honest and full of shit, high minded, yet childish. Simply put, the modest idea of a single conversation at a single dinner table transcends its mundane trappings to emerge as a wildly mesmerizing and transformative experience. Malle makes this simple story seem almost epic. His work is masterful.
Equally impressive is the earnest and detailed work of both Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory. Though carefully scripted, they manage to make this conversation seem thoroughly extemporaneous and consistently surprising. Their work together escalates to the point that this simple framework yields profound questions and deliciously few answers. They create an epic dance at this small table that is filled with humor, purpose, absurdity, and deeply moving wisdom.
I said it in the Back Yard, but I’ll preserve it here – ‘My Dinner with Andre’ celebrates the earth shaking power of friends assembling for a shared experience. Almost as soon as this odd story dug its nails in on me, I wanted it to end. I was jealous of the conversation Wallace and Andre were sharing with each other, and I was eager to share my own conversation with the Crew. It was then that I realized that no matter how I hate losing the Back Yard, it doesn’t really matter. In the end, Movienight has never been about where we watch the movies, it has always been about who we watch them with.
Netti, thank you for celebrating the magnificent conversation that is Movienight with this unlikely pick. I look back on all the nights we’ve spent together with equal measures of delight and pride. Thanks to this pick, I now look forward to our last night in the Back Yard with not just great sorrow, but also great faith that our conversation has yet to run its course, and we will force the waiter to linger a bit longer before we have to pay the check.
Brandon Comments:
What amazed me most about ‘My Dinner with Andre’ wasn’t the superb acting by Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, or the exceptional dialogue between the two, or even the director’s courage (as well as the producer’s) in making an entire film centered around two men having dinner--what astonished me most about this film was that it was all real! The two actors played themselves, and the ‘dinner’ was a real event, as well as the actual lengthy conversation. I did not know this while watching it, and although I loved every single word that came from Andre’s mouth, I thought to myself, “Oh, that would be beautiful...but no one would ever do that! No one would spend six months in a Polish forest teaching acting to non-English speaking people! No one actually knows an acting teacher named Grotowsky!” I thought the screenwriter had invented these stories to make Andre seem a little over-the-top, a little crazy, a little too quixotic for his own good...but these were ALL real events, real people, real conversations. I am still in awe of his life.
And the film itself, starting us out with the frumpy, down-and-out Wallace Shawn walking the streets of New York and dreading the “dinner with an old friend named Andre” is something we can all understand and appreciate, because we’ve all been forced into one of those 2-hour sit-downs where there’s not enough wine in the world to make it sound interesting. But once we meet Andre and hear him speak, our judgments switch and we see what a wonderful man he is, and we then see Wallace as the antagonist. But by the film’s end we see both sides of their arguments: Wallace being comfortable with his electric blanket and never leaving the same neighborhood he was born in, but also finding life, spirituality, and creativity everywhere around him, in the smallest of details. And, of course, Andre’s side of the argument is that you must constantly travel, experience new things, fall in love, and come close to death to truly appreciate life is the other side of the argument. It's a double-edged conversation either way you look at it.
A great film, Netti. I take back everything I said about your scathing review of ‘Boondock Saints.’ With this fine Selection of yours, you are allowed a little more leniency in tearing apart my future Selections. Bravo!
Buffy Comments:
I find myself still exhausted from this action-packed epic, as well as from the proxy rebirthing of our fresh compadre Buck which it inspired. I’ve wanted to see this film for a very long time, and knew basically nothing about it except the premise that they have this long conversation. While I seriously heart the boring and the esoteric, as I figured this would be, I just never had come across the opportunity to see this one; I am delighted the opportunity found me via Netti at Movienight. I found the film to be nothing like what I had anticiapated, and remarkably grounded in the real and the exciting.
I’m making no sense these days…I’ll attempt to be brief and see if that helps. Mostly, the film reminds me of a similar conversation I had with a mountain climber friend of mine. In his case, it was no metaphorical Mount Everest that was going to change things; it he’d already climbed the mountain, only to be left without any final answers as to purpose or finding meaning. He claimed this Donald Justice poem I gave him encapsulated his feeling exactly, and provided relief in that it validated something in what he was feeling. The form of this film itself seems to resolve in part the questions regarding what is life and what’s it for, as posed by the conversation: life means having dinner, conversation, experience. I know that the film is carefully constructed but it seemed to me that was the whole thing—they’re debating what is this thing called life and work and art, and all the while it’s happening all around them and through them, almost unnoticeably. Could there be much more to life and death than little haiku-inspiring moments such as this? Hanging with loved ones and taking care of plants…that pretty much does it for life’s “meaning.” Well, maybe there’s more, I believe in purpose I guess but I don’t know what to say about it at all. I do believe the equal point to the film is: blah blah blah, you arty types, the waiter would like to go home.
I told you, I’m making no sense these days. In parting, may I recommend to each Movienighter a hearty viewing of ‘My Breakfast with Blassie.’ I’d say it’s the working man’s/cynic’s response, but the experiment did garner Andy Kaufman a wife, which is lovely. Finally, for those of you wondering what synchronicity I am going to concoct out of this screening, pls. note that when I got home Wednesday, the scent of jasmine outside my house was so beautifully overwhelming I caught it half a block away—a little haiku human-on-earth moment of my own.
Nubs Comments:
Wow. Netti didn’t even wait for the body to get cold, as they say. With Coolbaugh moving away (sort of) just the week before and Wiener out of town, Netti saw a wide-open lane and took it. He managed to pull off a Slam Dunk on a weak defense made up of all artists and chicks (no offense, ladies).
I’m pretty sure we included this quintessential art-house flick in our jokes of movies that would never be shown on the Stucco. After all, nothing blows up, there’s no action whatsoever, and other than some aggressive blinking, nothing much happens at all. Both myself and the SELECTOR admitted to early impulses of walking out on this cult classic. Yet, I sat wide-eyed through the duration reflecting on my own pursuit while vicariously enjoying the pretentious conversation.
I have already made this point to our Crew in post-discussion so it is redundant here, in that the only readers of these reviews are that very same Crew. Still, in case Dave Robinson is bored enough to log in, I’ll say it again - ‘My Dinner with Andre’ is a conversation we all would rather avoid in our day to day lives. We are all forced to sit down and talk to that left side of our brain, or in this case a theatre director, that we avoid all day long just to pick up the dry cleaning. By forcing us to sit down and break bread with our fears and dreams (represented here as a dining partner) this movie provides the escape we all desperately seek in the Back Yard. ‘My Dinner with Andre’ is a conversation we should all have with ourselves from time to time. Praise to Movienight to for providing the venue. The stillness provided by two hours of being a fly on the wall causes numerous moments of sadness, fear, and elation contemplating our puny existence. In other words, it was an evening well-spent. Like our skeptical, practical hero, Wallace Shawn, I am both proud and disgusted to sit amongst you while we grow and are reborn together.
Nice cajones, Netti.
Sincerely,
Buck.
SELECTOR Comments:
I've been a bit silent about the last few films, due to other concerns like meticulously preparing for and failing to book some relatively large auditions. However, I would like to say that the run of picks that we have been posting has been quite good. I've thoroughly enjoyed every pick of recent and feel that even though we may be at a temporary end to Movienight as we know it, we have witnessed a spring in this little salon of ours.
As Davis noted, I was very nervous about this pick. How many films do you remember that you really enjoyed at any one time? I feel there is about a list of fifteen or so that might exist in your memory based largely upon there recent viewing. There are some, three or four, that refuse to leave that list. There are other films, whose staying power is in relation to your frame of reference for that period in your life. Then there are the others. The multiples of ten films that you only remember thanks to another associative cue: another film lover. So for the past week I was trying to access those other films that were further down the list that had perhaps been on the fifteen but had, for various reasons as listed above, been shuffled out. ‘My Dinner with Andre’ is one of those films. But it hovers closely around 19 perhaps. It creeps back in to the list of fifteen. About a year ago I was asked to make a top ten list in less than two minutes and this film appeared there. So, it does occupy, at least by default, a prominent position.
It's a performance artist's film. When I use that term, I mean an actor, director, writer of anything that is meant to be performed. I suspect that the film can translate to the lay people, however, those lay people would probably have to be adepts of metaphysical thought. It's not for everyone, is what you commonly hear. I think it's true. But it is for me. And generally for my friends. I've seen it three times now and it still breaks me up comedically and tragically. Over the 10 years or so that I've seen it I now approach it with different ideas, filters, metaphysical concerns and weights; like a good boxer it adjusts to my defenses and lands a surreptitious right hook. This is a testament to its quality. The interweaving of ideas and concepts through the three act structure is very tight.
It was a difficult beginning as the SELECTOR but all of those thoughts disappeared into the ether as I was absorbed into the simple, yet epic conversation. I couldn't help but feel two things in the hours after viewing this film with my friends. The first of which is that we are all given to trances; accepting various phenomena prima facie is in service to avoiding conflict and truly engaging the world. And two, that this film, this conversation is, in fact, a form of a monastery. As the monstrous modulation of culture continues, this film creates a refuge or an enclave from where we can look to the outside and witness thought die or (if you're more hopeful) be reborn.
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