My Dinner With Andre

[Cheeseumpuffs]

I just recently watched the film My Dinner With Andre for the second time, and it's giving me some thoughts. This is more of a personal reaction to some concepts raised in the film than it is a discussion of the film itself. What follows in this post is a juvenile hodgepodge of insecurity and anxiety and probably not worth anyone's time, so feel free to ignore this post and continue on your way. That said, I would appreciate any discussion that might occur regarding the concepts and my own insecure questions.

I'm most immediately struck by the conversation in regards to how everyone is playing a role and putting on an act. As Wally and Andre are/were both part of the theater business, a number of references to theater are made. The majority of these references involve Andre comparing the way people behave to the way actors behave (for instance the way people prepared for the beehive event). Further conversation implies that people are stifling themselves beneath a facade -- an act -- as they play the role of who they're "supposed" to be. The doctor looks exactly like a doctor looks. Everyone dresses and behaves the way their idealized archetype dictates them to. What does it take to break from this? Am I doing the same thing? I feel like I'm suffocating myself. Any aspect of who I am that may be deemed inappropriate is getting buried beneath a personality that's more or less a hollow shell. All of the things inside of me -- my immaturity, my perversion, my emotion -- it remains hidden, and the more I hide it, the harder it is to keep in mind who I am. What kinds of things am I interested in? Do I really like music and records and the like? Or am I just fixating on these because it's something within the range of acceptability? Do I even have an accurate concept of who I am anymore?

I'd always been under the impression that the purpose of a romantic relationship of some kind was to alleviate that disparity. A girlfriend would be the one person I could be entirely genuine and sincere with... Right?... The problem lately, though, has been that I close the sincere parts of myself away any time I find myself interested in someone for fear that they'll be scared away before we reach a level of complete honesty like that. But because I've closed away that part of myself, it becomes near impossible to let back out. To reveal my anxiety and insecurity to someone after keeping it hidden from them for so long would be out of character. It'd be worrisome and it'd mean there's "something wrong." And for something to be wrong... well, that's just inappropriate. Completely obnoxious, wouldn't you say? It goes back to the idea that I'm filling this role. I can't break character because it ruins everything; so I just carry on smiling politely and pretending I'm human on some level, despite the fact that I feel like I'm slowly forgetting who I am. I'm supposed to be this stoic, logical guy. I, like everyone, believe in science wholeheartedly and am skeptical of anything that may be deemed paranormal. I smile and laugh at the jokes of others, and I make several jokes of my own. But what about the the rest? How come I can't yell when I'm angry or cry when I'm sad? How come I can't mention my insane impressions of time and reality the way I feel I perceive them? At what point in my life did these things become taboo and wrong?

In the movie they talk about the inability to express emotion (or their conversation at least gets close enough to it that my mind starts wandering down that road). In recent memory I've only cried (really, truly cried) once, when my dog died this last winter (when I was little I cried all the time. I was a sensitive, expressive little kid, once). Even then, when one of the two things I love most in the world has vanished forever, I didn't let anyone know how upset I was. No one saw me cry. No one realized how terrible I felt. How could I burden them with that? How could I dare to impose my feelings on them? Isn't it selfish? Wouldn't that make me a bad person? That's how I feel most of the time, at least. If I have a problem. If I'm feeling down, or worried, or annoyed, I feel like talking about it and having other people deal with it makes me a bad person -- I mean, everyone's got problems; who am I to think that anyone wants to be a part of mine?

But where does that line get crossed? At what point does it become unhealthy to lock away negative emotions until you can't feel or express them properly anymore? How does sadness and anger all turn into a miserable dull ache that never makes itself known, yet never truly goes away?

Wally and Andre talk at length about the concept of "living" and you'll find so many conversations on the same subject all over human culture. What does that mean, though? If I go into the woods with a group of people and we do beehive events and pretend to be buried alive like Andre describes doing, am I "living" in that sense? Is dancing naked in the woods a more fitting way of "being alive" than sitting indoors and watching TV? Yes, I feel unfulfilled (god, I hate that word) by sitting in my room watching shapes move on a screen. I feel bored on a fundamental level and no new game -- no movie or show or book or anything -- is able to make me feel any less bored. I would very much like to go out and do this thing people call "living" but how do I do that? Where do I go? Doesn't the sheer act of trying to live make it impossible to do so? By actively attempting to be alive, does that mean I'm over thinking it to the point where living becomes impossible?

I don't have any answers, and I don't have a way to end this post without petering out anticlimactically. I'm more confused and lost than ever before, yet simultaneously I feel like I have a direction; like the thoughts and questions I have are going somewhere that doesn't end with a giant "fuck you" from the universe. That somewhere may be as simple as me just becoming a slightly more complete human being (man, that phrase is trite and annoying), but hey, I think that's where I want to end up.

Anyway, as I said above, feel free to ignore this completely. This is, I'm sure, a disgusting mess of juvenile insecurity.

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

Excellent movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVCbIzeQb30

Janus films published a great selection of masterpieces.
Another distinguished publisher is "Criterion Collection".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Criterion_Collection

 

[Cherry Cola]

Andre is an idiot and talks too much. There is no need to care about his stupid opinions. He's a self righteous-prick who spends time and money discovering "his inner self" or something like that just so that he can look down on everyone else calling them actors and whatnot.

The other guy is better but both of them essentially have a very long conversation on human nature which quickly ends up being a conversation about them instead. Because they refuse to make any inferences from biology or nature all they are left with is Andre's spiritual bullshit.

Andre is a weakminded dipshit who needs to die. I can't remember last time I felt such resentment towards a film character but that guy like totally creeps me out. He seriously thinks that people should "stop acting all the time" as if though there were some clear boundary between acting and being genuine, as if though we didn't need to do our fair share of acting in order to get along at all. He's such a lofty little piece of shit. Wally has his faults too, the main one being his failure to produce a gun and fire it into the face of Andre.

The film was decent I guess, mainly because of it's ability to provoke anger. Essentially it's a film about a stupid ENFP flapping his gums about.

 

[cheese]

This isn't juvenile, this is real. Honour it.

Some thoughts:

Spoiler

- Losing zest for life probably has a lot to do with living inauthentically. Lying is mentally taxing and emotionally draining for most people. Holding yourself back successfully creates the distance you feel necessary to protect yourself from subconsciously expected rejection/judgement at daring to have feelings, but that same distance also makes social exchange close to worthless. You have to spend to receive. Hoarding your value - you - gets you nothing but protection you gradually realise is coming at too high a cost (losing sight of who you are).

- You framed your post with harsh disclaimers and self-deprecation. But you had a lot to say in between. Don't discount that. Like a lot of people here you probably feel ashamed to care about things. I get that. Maybe the only way you saw attention legitimately given as a kid was if people pretended nothing was wrong, so that's what you turn to now. Or perhaps you saw that anyone genuinely expressing painful things that weren't fun and games was denigrated and belittled. Whatever the case is, sandwiching a long personal piece between the verbal equivalent of cutting is telling you something. Look to what you're ashamed/afraid of in yourself.

- The lure of relationships where people can be 'completely themselves' is a bit deceptive. Yes, such relationships exist, but sometimes they 'work' (in a loose sense) because each partner is crutching the other's issues, rather than helping them work through them. Being yourself is good, but who "we" are - or rather what our behaviour is - comes with a lot of coping mechanism crap we have to unlearn, if we want to progress. In other words, just "doing you", exactly as you are now, can sometimes mean hiding a lot of yourself, or continuing to damage yourself in a way that is familiar and therefore sort of comforting, but really painful overall.

- I think "living" is being yourself, and I think the joy of living comes from that and from being accepted/loved while you're at it, if you're lucky. It sounds absurdly trite, but I think it's the truth. Moments of genuine intimacy and honesty are precious and I think most people want that connection on a fundamental level, but a buttload of crap gets in the way. I think what people are looking for when they seek the spark in life is the connection to themselves (authenticity) and others (intimacy). Remember the last time you felt a connection with someone, or a moment of inspiration in yourself, or direction, or emotional 'truth'. Now imagine feeling that way all the time.

- I don't think there's any real discrepancy between those advocating 'being your real self' and those who claim there is no real self or that all one's behaviour is valid. I think the key is that all behaviour *is* a reflection of the self in some sense; however not all behaviour is what would be chosen if the individual knew all the options available or felt empowered to take them. In that case, "being yourself" is really about knowledge - both knowing what you most want, and knowing how to get it, rather than compromise in order to protect things you don't want to lose, or compromise that goes unnoticed because it's become habit (childhood patterns, etc). So you get people who, for instance, fear being honest because of the repercussions, so they withhold and lie in order to protect themselves. Is that what they want? Sure, relative to the loss they fear; it wasn't an imaginary puppet making those decisions. But is it what they most want? Not necessarily, given that some would prefer honesty and perhaps learn (through therapy, self-help books, guts, whatever) to take the risk, and experience a deeper joy and freedom than they previously felt. Of course, others may find they prefer the secrecy, and that's valid as well. If you don't feel satisfied, I think it's safe to say you're not getting as much out of life as you could (or you have depression).

Getting to know yourself is usually about getting to know what you truly value.

- I think your anxiety around the 'line' has to do with boundaries. They're either too high or completely down, so to save the shame of being needy you keep them completely up and keep all your problems to yourself. But you *can* lean on other people without crossing the line. The key is separating your problems from everyone else's. Everyone has issues and will blow up at you sometimes. You also have issues and will screw up sometimes. Don't fear either; learn from every occasion and pick yourself up. You'll know you're getting off track when you start being oversensitive (keeping walls extremely high to avoid being the bad guy or avoid the pain of a rebuff) instead of regulating your reactivity to other people. This one is a tricky one - that TiFe tries to get every social duty inscribed in concrete principle, but the truth is somewhere more fluid and internal. I'm still working it out.

- You might later become convinced that your thoughts were silly drama generated by a silly movie. This may be true in part (or not) but it's also part of the dismiss-and-deny process that is present throughout your post. Don't disqualify the thoughts you had; explore them.
*edit
I know there can be a compulsion to joke away what you think/feel, to avoid being someone who takes themselves too seriously. Levity and the ability to laugh at yourself/take yourself down a peg - they're important and useful. But they can also be overused and become a bandaid for things which genuinely need some working through.

This post was difficult to write. I left out a lot, and badly phrased a lot. I felt compelled to persevere though because I recognise the place you're in, and I appreciate the honesty. I would feel dishonest in turn if I let apathy eat this up. It's good to see some humanity. If nothing else was helpful, at heart I simply wanted to express that I hear you.

 

[Cherry Cola]

I already know a bunch of stuff that I hate about myself. I am with Andre as he formulates problems, the problem is he does so with such great enthusiasm, as if though he has proposing a solution was now offering a cure for it. Why is he speaking about the hopelessness of the human condition in this way? Makes him come of as a guru.

If I met Andre in real life I would think that it was cool that he had formulated all these issues, but I would never be able to listen to him preach about them because he never gets to the point were he talks about dealing with them. That's the point where things go from "I already know this, thanks for reminding me about how shit sucks though" to interesting.

Like there is no clear boundary between being yourself and acting so there is none between precious moments of authentic genuine intimacy and run of the mill social encounters. I don't love and treasure people because of particular moments but because of a large sum of interactions and happenings, a majority of which didn't involve profound moments of authentic and intimate interaction. I think authenticity and intimacy are great and all, but in this film they are just replacing the divine, acting as that towards which you must drive, the great point n purpose.

Truth is even when I'm with friends and relatives dear and close to me I can't really tell myself when exactly I'm being authentic and when I'm not. Andre makes these clear divisions which only exist on a conceptual plane and not in reality. In reality the situation shapes the thoughts and actions of those in it (vice versa with the situation being shaped by it's contents) in a feedback loop.

I dunno man, I appreciate your post though.

 

[scorpiomover]

I'm most immediately struck by the conversation in regards to how everyone is playing a role and putting on an act. As Wally and Andre are/were both part of the theater business, a number of references to theater are made. The majority of these references involve Andre comparing the way people behave to the way actors behave (for instance the way people prepared for the beehive event). Further conversation implies that people are stifling themselves beneath a facade -- an act -- as they play the role of who they're "supposed" to be. The doctor looks exactly like a doctor looks. Everyone dresses and behaves the way their idealized archetype dictates them to. What does it take to break from this? Am I doing the same thing? I feel like I'm suffocating myself. Any aspect of who I am that may be deemed inappropriate is getting buried beneath a personality that's more or less a hollow shell. All of the things inside of me -- my immaturity, my perversion, my emotion -- it remains hidden, and the more I hide it, the harder it is to keep in mind who I am. What kinds of things am I interested in? Do I really like music and records and the like? Or am I just fixating on these because it's something within the range of acceptability? Do I even have an accurate concept of who I am anymore?

I that the director chose to direct the actor playing a doctor to look and act too much like a doctor, and overdoes it, to emphasise just how much of the time everyone seems to be playing a role, even to the extent that we don't know that we're playing a role half the time. It's an existential issue. Maybe sometimes we aren't playing a role. But how would we know when we aren't? It's why people wax on about authenticity. The existential truth is that: authenticity is rare. It's nice when it happens. But there's little point in constantly waiting for something that rarely happens.

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

This isn't juvenile, this is real. Honour it.

Some thoughts:

Spoiler

- Losing zest for life probably has a lot to do with living inauthentically. Lying is mentally taxing and emotionally draining for most people. Holding yourself back successfully creates the distance you feel necessary to protect yourself from subconsciously expected rejection/judgement at daring to have feelings, but that same distance also makes social exchange close to worthless. You have to spend to receive. Hoarding your value - you - gets you nothing but protection you gradually realise is coming at too high a cost (losing sight of who you are).

- You framed your post with harsh disclaimers and self-deprecation. But you had a lot to say in between. Don't discount that. Like a lot of people here you probably feel ashamed to care about things. I get that. Maybe the only way you saw attention legitimately given as a kid was if people pretended nothing was wrong, so that's what you turn to now. Or perhaps you saw that anyone genuinely expressing painful things that weren't fun and games was denigrated and belittled. Whatever the case is, sandwiching a long personal piece between the verbal equivalent of cutting is telling you something. Look to what you're ashamed/afraid of in yourself.

- The lure of relationships where people can be 'completely themselves' is a bit deceptive. Yes, such relationships exist, but sometimes they 'work' (in a loose sense) because each partner is crutching the other's issues, rather than helping them work through them. Being yourself is good, but who "we" are - or rather what our behaviour is - comes with a lot of coping mechanism crap we have to unlearn, if we want to progress. In other words, just "doing you", exactly as you are now, can sometimes mean hiding a lot of yourself, or continuing to damage yourself in a way that is familiar and therefore sort of comforting, but really painful overall.

- I think "living" is being yourself, and I think the joy of living comes from that and from being accepted/loved while you're at it, if you're lucky. It sounds absurdly trite, but I think it's the truth. Moments of genuine intimacy and honesty are precious and I think most people want that connection on a fundamental level, but a buttload of crap gets in the way. I think what people are looking for when they seek the spark in life is the connection to themselves (authenticity) and others (intimacy). Remember the last time you felt a connection with someone, or a moment of inspiration in yourself, or direction, or emotional 'truth'. Now imagine feeling that way all the time.

- I don't think there's any real discrepancy between those advocating 'being your real self' and those who claim there is no real self or that all one's behaviour is valid. I think the key is that all behaviour *is* a reflection of the self in some sense; however not all behaviour is what would be chosen if the individual knew all the options available or felt empowered to take them. In that case, "being yourself" is really about knowledge - both knowing what you most want, and knowing how to get it, rather than compromise in order to protect things you don't want to lose, or compromise that goes unnoticed because it's become habit (childhood patterns, etc). So you get people who, for instance, fear being honest because of the repercussions, so they withhold and lie in order to protect themselves. Is that what they want? Sure, relative to the loss they fear; it wasn't an imaginary puppet making those decisions. But is it what they most want? Not necessarily, given that some would prefer honesty and perhaps learn (through therapy, self-help books, guts, whatever) to take the risk, and experience a deeper joy and freedom than they previously felt. Of course, others may find they prefer the secrecy, and that's valid as well. If you don't feel satisfied, I think it's safe to say you're not getting as much out of life as you could (or you have depression).

Getting to know yourself is usually about getting to know what you truly value.

- I think your anxiety around the 'line' has to do with boundaries. They're either too high or completely down, so to save the shame of being needy you keep them completely up and keep all your problems to yourself. But you *can* lean on other people without crossing the line. The key is separating your problems from everyone else's. Everyone has issues and will blow up at you sometimes. You also have issues and will screw up sometimes. Don't fear either; learn from every occasion and pick yourself up. You'll know you're getting off track when you start being oversensitive (keeping walls extremely high to avoid being the bad guy or avoid the pain of a rebuff) instead of regulating your reactivity to other people. This one is a tricky one - that TiFe tries to get every social duty inscribed in concrete principle, but the truth is somewhere more fluid and internal. I'm still working it out.

- You might later become convinced that your thoughts were silly drama generated by a silly movie. This may be true in part (or not) but it's also part of the dismiss-and-deny process that is present throughout your post. Don't disqualify the thoughts you had; explore them.
*edit
I know there can be a compulsion to joke away what you think/feel, to avoid being someone who takes themselves too seriously. Levity and the ability to laugh at yourself/take yourself down a peg - they're important and useful. But they can also be overused and become a bandaid for things which genuinely need some working through.

This post was difficult to write. I left out a lot, and badly phrased a lot. I felt compelled to persevere though because I recognise the place you're in, and I appreciate the honesty. I would feel dishonest in turn if I let apathy eat this up. It's good to see some humanity. If nothing else was helpful, at heart I simply wanted to express that I hear you.

Thanks for this. Some of the things you said have been bouncing around my head for a while, but it was nice to hear them from an outside source. And the things I hadn't thought of before were even more helpful, as it's nice to get an outside opinion (which is hard to get when you're having trouble opening up to people (it's really odd how I'm more comfortable talking about this stuff here to an internet full of strangers than I am to the people I actually know. I guess it's that their opinions and judgements more directly affect me)).

Anyway, I still have a ways to go getting all this sorted out, but you were very helpful in putting some new/better thoughts in my head.

I already know a bunch of stuff that I hate about myself. I am with Andre as he formulates problems, the problem is he does so with such great enthusiasm, as if though he has proposing a solution was now offering a cure for it. Why is he speaking about the hopelessness of the human condition in this way? Makes him come of as a guru.

If I met Andre in real life I would think that it was cool that he had formulated all these issues, but I would never be able to listen to him preach about them because he never gets to the point were he talks about dealing with them. That's the point where things go from "I already know this, thanks for reminding me about how shit sucks though" to interesting.

Like there is no clear boundary between being yourself and acting so there is none between precious moments of authentic genuine intimacy and run of the mill social encounters. I don't love and treasure people because of particular moments but because of a large sum of interactions and happenings, a majority of which didn't involve profound moments of authentic and intimate interaction. I think authenticity and intimacy are great and all, but in this film they are just replacing the divine, acting as that towards which you must drive, the great point n purpose.

Truth is even when I'm with friends and relatives dear and close to me I can't really tell myself when exactly I'm being authentic and when I'm not. Andre makes these clear divisions which only exist on a conceptual plane and not in reality. In reality the situation shapes the thoughts and actions of those in it (vice versa with the situation being shaped by it's contents) in a feedback loop.

I dunno man, I appreciate your post though.

This might be why I had such a strong reaction to the movie. Andre would say something is a problem and I'd continue thinking about it and I'd find a problem in myself and go "Gee, that is a problem" and he'd never say anything about fixing that problem though so I just went the whole movie thinking about problems I have and not resolving any of them which just created a lot of tension that I felt the need to relieve.

Thanks for the responses guys. They were informative and interesting.

 

[Architect]

There was a thread about this movie recently.

I just watched Before and After Dinner, a biography his much younger wife made of him from last year. While I liked the film, well really I liked more their lifestyle, it showed what a privileged guy he is. His father was really wealthy, so Andre could easily live a life making almost no money as a sometime actor and play director. Nice gig, if you can get it.

He'll be known for My Dinner with Andre, which (probably unknowingly) is a excellent portrayal of the INFJ psyche. It became obvious from the latter film that he is probably an ENFP.

 

[TheManBeyond]

i'll probably check it tonight, if you like only conversation movies i recommend The Man From Earth