My Dinner with Andre

I'm not entirely sure why, but one of my favorite movies is Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre. It seems that every few years I watch it again, as I did last night, and every time I'm once again seduced by Andre Gregory's stories of his various adventures and quests. But then finally, as always, I find myself agreeing almost completely with Wally Shawn's reaction. Isn't life really much simpler than Andre makes it out to be? Can we actually imagine anything better than doing our little tasks, drinking our morning coffee (which I'm doing now), and going about our personal day to day business? And if we find ourselves with nothing else to do, we pick up a book. In any case, some of us find it hard to believe in imaginary forces and beings, or messages from the future. For those like us, strange coincidences are really nothing more than strange coincidences. As Wally points out, Chinese fortune cookies are just in no position to know what's going to happen to us.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something in this little movie that gets at some very basic issues of life. I love that it's a sort of celebratory dinner with an old friend at a nice restaurant, and that Wally doesn't really want to go, even though he has been friends with Andre, or has known him and worked with him, for years. Then the dynamics of the meeting and the meal -- with the rituals of ordering and the waiter (wonderfully portrayed by Jean Lenauer) bringing the food -- begin to take over, and with Wally's sometimes rather forced interest and questioning, Andre begins to tell his fantastic stories of his quest for meaning in life. It's also appropriate that both Andre and Wally are associated with the theater, since so much of Andre's world and world view has to do with performance. For Andre all the world is a stage, and he and those he encounters and interacts with are all performers.

At first, Wally seems merely to be trying to make the best of an awkward encounter. He admits that his strategy is going to be to ask Andre questions and get him talking. But then Wally (along with us) is gradually seduced by Andre's stories and their bizarre theatricality. I'm sure part of this, certainly for me at any rate, is because these stories are like flashbacks to the sixties and early seventies, to what we called the counter culture and the quest for alternate ways of being and breaking through to what we were sure was some more authentic form of existence or more genuine reality. Those of us who weren't lost on the quest or left behind on the journey eventually returned to resume our quotidian lives and were delighted if we were lucky enough, like Wally, to find a cold cup of coffee, without a dead fly or roach in it, still waiting for us.

And that's where the movie really takes hold, as Wally, somehow in spite of himself and his initial determination to just get through his awkward encounter with Andre, decides that he simply has to respond, even though he doesn't know if he can actually put his response into words. But he finds the words and he explains his own rather simple but for me extremely profound view of personal existence. I don't really know how many people have the same reaction that I do at this point, but I find that I'm extremely satisfied by Wally's expression of frustration with Andre's magical view of existence. Why must we go off to India or the Sahara or the top of Everest to find reality or meaning in life? Why can't we find it in our own rooms or in the cigar store next to the restaurant? And isn't it wonderful that we no longer live in the middle ages, but can now benefit from some of the hard won knowledge of our sciences?

This movie always makes me feel like I've been through something real, perhaps only because it confirms my own view of life. But I'm somewhat amazed that there are so many others who must have a similar response. The film has a 7.7 rating on IMDB, and has clearly become a minor classic and a cult favorite. It was just recently featured once again on TCM, which was why we decided to watch it last night, since J had recorded and saved it on the DVR. I wake up the next morning and have my coffee and read the newspaper and I think to myself, life is really so simple, why do we make it so hard? And why in the twenty-first century are so many still fighting and killing one another over imaginary beings and magical visions of reality? And I look around and I know that I am fortunate indeed, but at the same time I also know that there has been some element of choice. Oh well, I suppose life is a mystery, and I'm sure my own views are as fantastic as everyone else's. And if I found a bug in my coffee, I'm sure I would be disappointed, but I hope I wouldn't let it spoil my entire day.