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My Dinner with Andre
(****)
About a month ago, I wrote a review on the movie "Being John Malkovich", and I stated that occasionally something comes along that is just so different that it's like a breath of fresh air. That's what "My Dinner with Andre" is. Sometimes something comes out that is just so strange that it works.
The movie is, like the title says, about a man having dinner with Andre. The Andre here is Andre Gregory, and Wallace Shawn narrates for us. There are no tricks pulled, and there are no clichés given. Instead, it's just two intelligent men talking over a meal. And it works perfectly. This is quite possibly one of the greatest pieces of film I have seen.
We meet Wallace earlier one day, and he tells us that he's received a call from an old friend, Andre. Andre's been traveling the last several years, and Wallace has been "literally avoiding this man for years." Wallace isn't quite happy anymore. "When I was young and rich all I thought about was art and music. Now I'm 36, and all I think about is money." Andre has not had that experience. A former theatre director, Andre claims to have had a breakdown. Traveling for two years, he's come back to Manhattan, where a mutual friend observed Andre leaning against a building and crying. He had just seen the Ingmar Bergman movie, and was drawn by the line "I could always live in my art, but not in my life."
Andre has been living, and Wallace has been trying to sell plays occasionally. At first, their dinner conversation focuses on Andre's travels; places he's been, the people he's met. During this, Wallace sits there smiling. This is a man who's alive.
Soon the conversation turns to their relationships, their loves. What is the meaning of life? This movie is much too smart to give us an answer, but its two characters are smart enough to be able to ask it. Andre is different from Wallace, but only superficially. Andre thinks you have to travel far and wide to feel alive. But no, Wallace counters; you don't have to climb Everest to feel alive. Sometimes the simple things are what make us happy. Wallace just wants a good cup of coffee and to read his Charlton Heston biography.
Neither man is wrong. And neither man will leave this dinner unchanged. They don't argue, instead they simply exchange ideas. Watching Wallace listen to Andre, we can see him both countering what he disagrees with and applauding what works so well for him.
Contrary to popular belief, this movie was not improvisational, and it was not filmed in real time. Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory constructed a beautifully bizarre script, and Louis Malle worked for weeks to get every shot perfectly. That restaurant was a stage, and the lines were rehearsed over and over.
Doesn't it work so well? Every tic, every stutter feels so real you could swear it was improvisational. Since this movie, neither man has been great in film. Gregory had a role as John the Baptist in "The Last Temptation of Christ", and Shawn has been in numerous roles as a character actor. As far as film goes, these two will never need to do anything else. For two men bred on the stage, this is their legacy...Whatever that means. Heh heh heh.