My Dinner With Andre

Hard to find adjectives for a movie like this. Intriguing, Esoteric, Provocative, Ingenious ........you get the drift :)

The entire movie is a conversation between two friends, just one conversation over dinner. A conversation about art, relationships, science, self....pretty much an inner journey into the meaning of life. Are we living just by role? by habit? Can we, or are we connecting at a core level? 

                                     

Both New York theater figures, Andre, a maverick director. Wallace, a down to earth playwright.

Actually, they're not even friends. The movie starts with Wallace apprehensive about meeting Andre, his earlier mentor, who he heard often drop off films and leave even his wife and children and occasionally to go off to Tibet to talk to trees, or Poland to join a shamanic group or to an ashram in the mountains of India. 

Andre is a quixotic seeker, one willing to ask the questions, go where the search takes him, take the risks, and live on his terms. Wally, more grounded and accepting of life's norms. 

Andre seems totally caught up with getting in touch with what's real within ...original feelings....quoting sanskrit....stating how the verb 'to be' is also the same as 'to grow'. He is so animated and involved in the conversation that it slowly grows on you.

Wally more the listener, giving the right responses, asking the right questions, agreeing at times, admiring at times, resisting at times, in that effort to hold onto his own practical world views. 

And then we have this conversation which seems to just go on and on, until they are the last ones left in the restaurant. 

A unique facet was that both actors retained their names in the movie, Andre Gregory and Shawn Wallace....especially interesting as much of the conversation is about how much of life is lived as 'roles', and they are said to have played their own personalities.

I don't think it's a movie that's giving answers, as much as it about two people who are fully engaged in that space.....not just in words, but in tone, energy, being. And while seemingly trying to convince the other of their way, there's an underlying respect and acceptance of each others ways of life.

One of those movies that's unconventional and abstract enough to need multiple watchings.