A Highly Conscious Conversation from "My Dinner with Andre" Movie

[Mr S]

A short clip from the film My Dinner With Andre makes some important observations



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This clip from the 1981 film My Dinner With Andre is dubbed ‘A Highly Conscious Conversation’, and is one of those old classic cinematic excerpts (like Brave New World, The Network, or 1984) that provided an eerie, prophetic window into the future we are now living in. It touches on subjects such as media brainwashing, the death of intellect and emotion, the money system, and awakening to the truth.

It was directed by Louis Malle and written by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, who also star in the movie. My Dinner With Andre could be described as an artistic, intelligent, and very unusual piece of cinema. Wallace, a playwright, and Andre, a theater director, meet in a New York restaurant after years of lost contact, and spend two hours philosophizing about life, travel, theater, humanism, spirituality and everything in between. Although the conversation seems spontaneous and very natural, the entire dialogue was actually scripted over the period of a year, using authentic recorded conversations between the pair. The camera stays with the men for two hours as they eat and drink in ‘real time’, giving the viewer the sense that they are part of this intimate discussion. Critics of the movie might say this is all there is to the story, but they would be missing the point.

Wally, the more rational and pragmatic of the two, listens in astonishment as Andre describes various adventures he’s had traveling the world. The director talks of his experiences at Findhorn, a Scottish commune, in a forest in Poland, in the Sahara with a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and a performance piece he did on Long Island which led to him being buried alive. During the conversation, we get the impression that Wally begins to realize there are other ways of living, other ways of perceiving the world.

This short clip from ‘Educate Inspire Change’ begins with Wally asking Andre whether he believes humanity has become bored; whether we are all just like “spoiled children.” Andre replies that he believes we are. But why? Here’s his theory:

“Has it ever occurred to you Wally that the process that creates this boredom that we see in the world may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money, and that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks?” Andre continues: “Somebody who is bored is asleep. And somebody who is asleep will not say no.”

Andre talks about how avoiding the media could be a healthy thing, because “everything you hear now contributes to turning you into a robot.” He talks of how big cities are effectively “concentration camps”, built by the people themselves to perpetuate their own slavery, with citizens acting as “both the guards and the prisoners”. He talks about the need to escape all of this, and the problem of where to go.

“See, the 1960s represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished,” Andre suggests. He talks about how we are now living in the early stages of a new dark age, but is hopeful that this era will include “pockets of light”, as awakened humans create a new future in spite of everything. “We’re talking about an underground [resistance]”, Andres tells Wally. “I keep thinking that what we need is a new language. A language of the heart.”

The movie is full of insightful food for thought, and it’s worth watching the whole film if you enjoyed listening to Andre’s observations. Let us know whether you agree in the comments section.

This article (Watch How This 1981 Film Accurately Predicted The Current State Of The World) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.

[Taco]

The Orwellian world we live in was predicted by the 1981 movie "My Dinner With Andre". Check out this scene...

[Winston]

Wow @Mr S I didn't know such a film existed. I'll look it up and see if I can watch the whole thing somewhere, or download it. Thanks for letting us know about it. I love deep conversations in films.

Btw we should film our deep conversations in person too. I'm sure they'd be on par with that of such films. lol

[Winston]

The reviews of it are good too.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082783/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Storyline

Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, apparently playing themselves, share their lives over the course of an evening meal at a restaurant. Gregory, a theater director from New York, is the more talkative of the pair. He relates to Shawn his tales of dropping out, traveling around the world, and experiencing the variety of ways people live, such as a monk who could balance his entire weight on his fingertips. Shawn listens avidly, but questions the value of Gregory's seeming abandonment of the pragmatic aspects of life.

An original, unique, fascinating and intriguing conversation
31 March 2000 | by Afracious – See all my reviews

This is the tale of two different men: Andre, an avant-garde director, and Wally, a theatre actor and writer. They meet at a restaurant and philosophise and discuss a variety of subjects. The majority of the dialogue is spoken by Andre. He is a far more loquacious and complex character than Wally. Wally is a laconic and soft-spoken guy, who enjoys a simple life with his wife. His epitome of bliss is drinking a cold cup of coffee left from the night before, without finding a cockroach in it. Andre is an intense ponderer. He tells Wally the stories of his experiences travelling around the world, from his time spent in far flung places such as Scotland, Poland, India and Tibet. Andre gives the impression he is exaggerating at times. Is he fabricating some of the tales? He could be. Especially the ones where he claims he has seen monsters and weird creatures. The premise of two men conversing for 110 minutes at a dinner table is not going to be the most appealing film, but this film holds your attention and intrigues the viewer. You become involved with Andre's musings somehow, and just as fascinated as Wally is. A great piece of arresting cinema.

10/10
A Film For All Time
cinemaniac200226 December 2010

There are movies made of every kind, of many different genres. While quite a few are entertaining, some films can actually be life changing. "My Dinner With Andre" is one of those films. I first saw the film in the early 1990s, around a decade after it was made. Caught in a vortex of corporate America office work drudgery as a single parent, the movie inspired me then to really examine my life and actively work to change it.

I struggled to understand how a theater director (Andre) could ever become disenchanted with his life enough to drop out and search for more meaning. For me, the ability to do anything artistic to earn a living was a dream come true. As I watched the film, it became apparent how even someone in the arts could become disconnected - in fact, even more so than other people, who had resigned themselves to live the way that they were expected to according to standards they didn't agree with. I came away with the conclusion that it is the artists in society who have an obligation to cast truth's light on culture and how it affects humanity. This is a huge responsibility, and it is often frustrating for creative people to have to confront the mundane aspects of life which can create soul crushing circumstances, driving people to behave in the most inhumane of ways.

Seeing the film again recently, it had a whole new meaning for me. Now that I am on the other side of the spiritually deadening life in corporate America - I can see how my goals and decisions to change my life were extremely necessary - in fact, imperative to my existence. Since the film was made, people have spent decades engaging in all manner of robotic and soul deadening activities - many to the detriment of themselves and everyone around them. We have also seen a technological surge that helped to liberate people to a certain degree, while further enslaving others. Regardless of which type of person one happens to be, at the end of the day, most everyone should work toward doing the things that give them joy - without harming others in the process. While this is much easier said than done, it doesn't make the goal any less important to accomplish. In fact, on a very basic level, it is just as necessary as eating, breathing and sleeping. Maybe even more significant, since human apathy, in its own way, can systematically destroy and sully the spirit driven intention of others.

"My Dinner With Andre" is every bit as relevant now as when it first premiered, perhaps even more so. A conversation about the meaning of life and how people choose to live it, along with all of the outside forces that exist to complicate it, will never go out of style. This is a beautiful masterpiece of a film, that can be watched many times, to produce different points of view which provoke interesting, engaging and enlightening discussions by those who experience it. This is very apparent as Shawn's character, who on the surface seems to disagree with a lot of what Andre says. Yet by the end of the film, on his way home, his eyes observe things in his environment as though a new light was been cast upon them.

10/10
Existential Paradox becomes Celluloid
fideist21 March 1999

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE is one of the greatest movies of all time because it works on a seemingly infinite number of levels. Yet at the same time it is one of the biggest failures in film because it only succeeds in connecting to the most insightful of its audience. The resulting paradox only serves to prove the film's lesson to be true. Brilliant!

This is either a movie you will turn off after fifteen minutes, or it is a movie you will watch over and over again to pick up all the things you missed in previous screenings. The former will be bored and lost by the endless, meaningless talk. The latter will find gold in every word, and veins left to be mined time after time.

In simple terms, the question is understood "If life is a stage, are you going to be an actor, a director, or a playwright?" It is the viewer's choice. Wally is a struggling playwright who has fallen back on acting. Andre is a former actor and director who has left the theatre entirely. Wally and Andre meet for dinner, and Andre recounts his experiences since leaving the theatre.

But one of the ironies is that their dinner itself is theatre, and both Andre and Wally have roles to fill. [Notice they wrote the script and use their real names. They are not playing characters. They are necessarily playing themselves.] And summarily the viewer also has a role to fill. If life is a stage, viewing the theatre is in itself theatre. The viewer is now in a place of choosing the role. And will that choice be made mechanically or deliberately? Mechanics is acting. Deliberation is playwrighting.

This is a brilliant, brilliant film. One of the greatest movies of all time. And its resolve is purely subjective to the individual viewer. The goal is to deliberate and come away enlightened (literally). Unfortunately the majority of viewers will act mechanically and turn it off.

[Winston]

Ok I found the whole thing on YouTube. There are several versions of it, but this is the only one that's watchable. However it's speeded up a bit, so that the 110 min film has become 90 min instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV2iFqCgBhE

Here are some more clips from the film. It's interesting that they talk about how the 1960's was the last era where people were real and still human and soulful. After that, people became just robots. That seems to be true. And their talk about how "comfort kills" is so true too, yet most Americans don't realize it because the stupid media never tells you such deep stuff. They even talk a little about conspiracies too.

[Winston]

Trailer for "My Dinner With Andre". It contains some deep dialogue too.



Siskel and Ebert, the famous film critics, love it too. They said it's the kind of film that they always wanted films to be like. Here is their review.

[Winston]

Some torrent links to download the film. Some of them have subtitles so you can focus on the dialogue without missing anything (see description).

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/658867 ... iesbyrizzo

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/497954 ... With_Andre

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/541535 ... with_Andre

Roger Ebert
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... 30301/1023
Someone asked me the other day if I could name a movie that was entirely devoid of cliches. I thought for a moment, and then answered, "My Dinner With Andre." Now I have seen the movie again; a restored print is going into release around the country, and I am impressed once more by how wonderfully odd this movie is, how there is nothing else like it. It should be unwatchable, and yet those who love it return time and again, enchanted.

Amazon.com
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 Shannon

[Winston]

I finally saw the film. The first half was kind of tedious with too many details about Andre's stories. And the acting was fake when the shorter guy kept saying "Tell me more!" In real life he would get bored with so many details. Not enthusiastic about hearing more. The meaningful part starts in the second half of the film. From there it gets better. The last third or fourth portion of the conversation is best. But it takes a long while to build up to it. So yeah there were deep enlightening parts of the conversation but only near the end, as the first half was tedious and not that interesting. Would definitely recommend anyway, just for the second half of it.

[Winston]

This guy recommends "My Dinner with Andre" too and explains why it's unique and doesn't fit any cliches or tropes.

[Winston]

Clip from the 1978 movie "My Dinner with Andre" where they talk about how Americans are being lobotomized into robots who cannot comprehend leaving their town or city, and why Americans should get out and move abroad before its too late. Amazing insight or prediction from 1978.

[Winston]

Hi guys. I put up a good movie for you on my Google Drive that I think you will like. But I put up the mp3 audio version only though because the whole movie is a 2 hour conversation at a dinner table so you don't need to see the visuals of the film. The audio version will suffice. It's called "My Dinner with Andre" and is from 1981. It's about two men at a dinner table in New York talking about how travel opens your mind and makes you feel more alive, and how America is losing its soul and becoming more degenerate and prison-like. It's pretty good and worth listening to. The conversation is very inspiring and enlightening and was ahead of its time. They even mention Jack Kerouac during the conversation. I put it up on my Google Drive for you guys. I set the file at a bitrate of 32 kbps so it's a small size. Only around 25 MB. You can stream it or download it to your phone or computer. Here's the link. Hope you enjoy it.

My Dinner with Andre (1981)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12nZGyZ ... p=drivesdk