1981: My Dinner With Andre (27th)

What else happened this year? My gut is telling me that blade Runner came out in this year. My gut is also telling me something related to Pol Pot... [Blade runner is pretty much right, and Cambodia has an 'election' which only one party was allowed to run, so close, but not directly Pol Pot related].

What is the plot - in one sentence? A playwright named Wally meets his an eccentric friend Andre for dinner: they haven't seen each other in ages.

I don't have time, just spoil it for me? That's it. They talk at each other for hours, until the wait staff are practically begging them to leave, and then Wally heads home, seemingly eager to wake his partner and discuss things further. .

What is the meaning of the title? It couldn't be more plain, he's going for dinner with Andre.

This is the setting. If you've seen this picture, you could listen to the rest of the movie without vision, and you'd enjoy it as much.

Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? This is arty enough and pretentious enough to have not aged at all. You'd feel about this today as you would 40 years ago when it came out.

Any thoughts? This is very firmly in the cultural lexicon, so I was happy to get around to it, maybe enjoy it, maybe be a better person because of it. I was disappointed, however, that after a 5 minute introduction, it's just listening to Andre talking pretentious nonsense for 50 minutes. He tells about his experiences in Poland, in Scotland, his tours around the world, looking for meaning, and his incredibly pretentious plays and acting workshops. I struggled. Then I realised that it's probably making fun of this type of person, the wait staff seem to despise him, and there are a couple of glimpses from people around who seem to feel the same way that I did. 

 After this Wally starts to talk a little more. They're having a pretentious, academic discussion, and when Wally's plays are discussed they're ridiculous too. It's safe to say that neither of them is as clever as they think that they are. 

 However, is that the point? It suggests it might be by the response of the wait staff, who seem to view them as annoyingly as I did. I must admit, I struggled during the first... 50 minutes where Andre talked nonstop. After this, they get to discussing society as a whole. 

 Andre describes society being 'an Orwellian nightmare, where people are asleep' - which is obviously where John Carpenter got his inspiration for 'They Live' from. Together they discuss the need to challenge society (through terrible plays with human corpses as props in them), and that the 1960s were the peak of humanity, everything is in decline since then, See how it is now? Is it prescient? I don't know.

 All of their chat, hints at something interesting, that... Andre says, with all of the stress of life, and how unfulfilling life is, I can see why people cheat on their spouse - just to feel something. I'm guessing that his trips around the world, his recent behaviour which Wallace hints at in voice over, was the whole thing him justifying an affair he had? My guess is, yes.

Wallace says that he finds joy in the little things in life (cold coffee, being one, reading reviews another, Andre has traveled the world to find meaning, and says he shuns the material world. As ever, the guy who doesn't believe in society ends up footing the bill.

Would you recommend this? I would, if you view it as a comedy. If you view it as a serious piece, it's extraordinarily pretentious. I suppose I'd recommend it merely for the Simpsons video [click here for that.

I'll also say that with the staging (basically two people chatting for an hour and a half) and the two stars being in theatre, I'll guess that this was a stage play before being made into a movie. I also don't care enough to find that information out.  

Final thoughts? The food didn't play a major part (other than that Wally didn't understand what any of it was), but it was horrifying for seeing Wally eating a bowl of soup at one stage. It's a truly horrible thing to see. Why is he chomping soup?

It was also mildly amusing when he declared something as 'inconceivable.' My final question of the day though, is what exactly did Andre get out of this conversation, that he couldn't have gotten just talking to a wall instead?

 

 

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