This film has become a classic due to the lack of a plot.

They don’t make movies like My Dinner with Andre anymore.

If My dinner with Andre were released today, in New York and Los Angeles it will fetch around $200,000 before being sent to streaming purgatory within a month. But in 1981 it grossed over $5 million: nothing mind-blowing, especially in the days before streaming and home video, but still more than ten times its budget. It also left a long cultural shadow both through links and influence. It has become a kind of metonym for dry, high-brow cinema (Milhouse of The Simpsons plays My dinner with Andre arcade game), even though its meandering conversations, semi-autobiographical nature, and subtle portrayal of cosmopolitan life anticipated everything from Seinfeld To Before dawn To girls. When people mourn the demise of “adult films”, they mourn the absence of films like Andre: thoughtful, low-key films that may not appeal to everyone, but will still find their audience.

“My dinner with Andre” is still relevant today

Some viewers may reject My dinner with Andre out of hand. After all, it’s about two middle-aged privileged white men discussing their problems in a posh French restaurant. Andre could afford to travel the world during his midlife crisis, and while Wally has a lot of money problems, he still manages to make a living in New York as a working actor and playwright, which would be nearly impossible these days. no exchange. apartment with eleven people. (He also mentions that he grew up rich; in real life, Sean’s father, William, was a long time editor New Yorker.) What could these two characters say that would resonate today?

A lot, as it turns out. The Café des Artistes have closed and there’s a lot less graffiti on the New York subway, but Andrethemes of existential alienation only intensified. As Wally makes his way towards the social commitment he dreads, his voice-over takes stock of his life and discovers something is missing from it: he is a disillusioned writer running “errands”. [his] trade” without much personal satisfaction. “When I was ten years old… I only thought about art and music. Now I’m 36 and all I think about is money.” In our current landscape, which people call “late stage capitalism” because the alternative is too terrible to consider, what could be more akin than that?

The conversation between Wally and Andre is mostly one-sided at first. As soon as Wally sits down, Andre begins to regale him with exciting stories about his adventures: re-enacting a play A little prince in the desert, visiting an ecovillage in Scotland, and being buried alive in Montauk. Andre is a captivating speaker and his experience sounds fascinating, but anyone who’s had lunch with someone who’s just returned from studying abroad will recognize Wally’s impatience when Andre chats. Eventually, Wally begins to resist some of Andre’s more mystical claims, such as that the people of a Scottish eco-village keep pests out of their crops by politely asking. When Andre claims that it was the experience that got him off track, Wally is even more reluctant. After all, not everyone can leave work for several years to go on retreats in avant-garde theaters.

“My Dinner with Andre” Doesn’t Try to Give You Easy Answers

The dialogue that follows covers various topics, each more abstract and esoteric than the last. But no matter how much they talk about modern society, spiritualism, and how long ago everything went wrong (André thinks Sachin Littlefeather is taking Marlon BrandoOscar was the last time), the main question remains the same: how to deal with the modern world? André believes that people have become alienated from their true nature and that too much comfort breeds a dangerous complacency: “he who is bored sleeps, and he who sleeps will not say no.” Wally, on the other hand, believes that abandoning the modern world is impractical at best and pointless at worst: “Isn’t there just as much ‘reality’ to be experienced in a cigar shop as there is on Mount Everest? Don’t you enjoy just getting up in the morning?

Society has changed immeasurably since 1981, but these changes are only AndreTopics are more relevant. What does “comfort” mean in a world that seems to be teetering on the brink of collapse? What does “reality” mean when the internet allows people to control their existence to the point where even the truth is subjective? How much leeway does a person need to truly change their life? If someone has found a way to cope with life’s adversity, is it right to challenge their beliefs, even if you don’t agree with it? Is it even possible to deal with modern life, or are all survival mechanisms merely delaying the inevitable reckoning?

By the time Andre and Wally finish dinner, Andre seems far less confident than at the beginning. But when Wally takes a taxi back to his apartment, passing various New York locations he remembers from his youth, he looks content, even peaceful. Maybe this conversation will inspire both of them to further reassess their values, once again changing their views. Maybe they’ll both go to bed and forget about it in the morning. It’s not clear, but since Satie’s calm Gymnopedia No. 1 plays in the background, it can be assumed that there is a certain peace in this uncertainty. My dinner with Andre considered pretentious by some, but pretentiousness implies dishonesty, and AndreExistential anxiety sounds sincere. He doesn’t have the answers, and he doesn’t claim to have them. But it provides a quiet, meditative space in a nice Manhattan restaurant to think things through—at a time when too many movies tell you how to feel, that openness is to be cherished.