My Dinner with Andre
by Louis Malle
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Andre Gregory, Jean Lenauer, Roy Butler, Wallace ShawnDirector: Louis Malle
Writer: Andre Gregory
Writer: Wallace Shawn
Cinematographer: Jeri Sopanen
Editor: Suzanne Baron
Producer: Beverly Karp
Producer: Dave Franke
Producer: George W. George
Producer: Keith W. Rouse
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: Pan & Scan, 1.33:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-08-25
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of My Dinner with Andre
Movie Review: Theater on the screen, french style.
Summary: 3 Stars
It reminded me of Solomon's Ecclesiastes without the moral in the end. Here's this guy who is worried about his bills and just barely making a living for him and his wife, who goes to a dinner in an apparently expensive restaurant with another guy who has not those trivial worries to think about but other kind. This other guy has no economical difficulties, his worries are more existential (ludicrous too), he is the 'good socialist', worried about the feelings of others, of how we people (socialists when thinking of themselves always regard themselves as 'the' people) are not really living the moment, are not realizing what life is really about. Transcental thinking alright. A point should be made that all this modern Samaritan does is think, and while thinking he totally misses the food, the reunion with his old friend (?), the waiter, in fact everything around, which he says we ought to be mindful of.
So here is this double side to the coin. The man who is really trying to make ends meet: living too much to think about living; and the man who represents the opposite, who thinks about living and never puts his feet on the ground (in spite of having traveled all over the globe) and whose mind is never at rest, never satisfied.
Wasn't this Solomon's dilemma? But Solomon came to a conclusion. He had experienced all these kinds of living, he had looked for the meaning of life in every possible wrinkle of human existence, and none satisfied him, in the end: all was vanity. Well, without speaking that word, vanity, in this film, it is implied though. Both the poor man's life and the idle-progressive man's life are but vanity. Does the film imply that we should look for a middle-way of life, that we should work out a consensus, that word loved by the guilty-rid of Western society? I don't know. The ending is open. What I liked most about the film, though, is the craft that made possible a film like this: two man having dinner together and talking beginning thru end. That's all. It ain't 'Gunfight at OK Corral' but it's still worthwhile.
Summary of My Dinner with Andre
The sheer audacity of My Dinner with Andre drew throngs of curious filmgoers who made the film the most talked-about art-house hit of 1981. After all, who'd ever heard of a movie consisting of nearly two hours of nonstop dinner conversation? Ah... but this isn't just any conversation--it's the kind of mesmerizing, soul-searching, life-affirming exploration that we feel privileged to listen to, and with unobtrusive style, director Louis Malle invites us to eavesdrop to our hearts' and minds' content. The film was written by two New Yorkers at the dinner table, noted playwright-actor Wallace Shawn and well-known stage director Andre Gregory, who essentially play themselves. They taped their conversations for several weeks and Shawn gradually shaped them into a scripted conversation, but you'd never know it from watching the movie. The talk flows and flows until you're captivated by Gregory's stories of world travel and spiritual quests in Poland, India, Tibet, the Sahara desert... the tales of a soul-searcher who'd dropped out of the theater world to rediscover his zest for living. Shawn plays the skeptic, the voice of reason, his feet on the ground but his own mind willing to soar. The cumulative effect of this conversation is almost hypnotic, and certainly plays into our eternal appetite for storytelling. Both primal and sophisticated, witty and profound, My Dinner with Andre is a film that can be savored over time, offering new revelations with each viewing as the listener-viewer develops his or her own appreciation of life's great mysteries. --Jeff ShannonComedy DVD Video
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