My dinner with Andre (720 X 480) DivX

Kindly download your subtitles folder here:

http://thepiratebay.org/edit/5172701

(SRT folder for French Spanish and Portuguese)from my movie reviews at moviesbyrizzo.info :



Having been described as "brilliant" in my work at senior philosophy studies at

a major western university (a comment from the course professor who was the

associate chair of the department), I am always up to the job when I have to

allow myself the edification of a differing perspective in what there might be

in the way of an argument needing rebuttal and correction (if you will pardon

the presumptiveness here - its well intentioned I put it to you). As such I

have to tell you that I have only once fallen asleep at a movie theater unable

to sit through the entire ordeal without some means of escape. This was the

movie and i saw it a couple of decades ago when it first came to town (in 1981).



This is an important movie for discussion among all human beings who want to

make a choice to seek substantive, wholesome real answers and to avoid the

flights into inanity and indeed insanity that are the stuff of the script

writers here and the obvious preference of the two characters in the play.



Although pitted in discussion at some frivolous and superficial level as

seemingly at times even antagonistic towards each other, rather than showing

complete deference to what is being said by the character "Andre", the fact is

that fundamentally these two individuals are altogether on the same wavelength

at the most basic levels of relating to other human beings in their midst -

despite a major difference in the level of the facade and style of relating as

it were. That said, we see in the movie script that this difference in style

does cause differences to occur and to crop up between them in what they say to

each other. What is more worth noting is that the level of conversation they

are both engaged in is certainly the stuff of their own genre in the way of

evolutionary development. What I mean to say is that they are not people of the

genre who have the intuitive sort of wisdom that one might associate with

humanistic philosophy, based on the very obvious statements and manner in the

presentation thereof, and of course in the level of tolerance of such views.



As such the intelligence in their conversation, such as it is, is at all times

a contrivance, an attempt to create a different reality from what it is that

involves normal human functioning, and different modes and fantasies of escape

into the inane, with admitted schizophrenic like symptoms being experienced

along the way as is disclosed by the character in the play named "Andre" played

by Andre Gregory himself (the writer in addition). In these flights into the

inane, the seeming ability to generate a thought, of any real meaning in terms

of having true validity and real value, (in a sane sort of way) seems to

command the entire scope of the movie as a way of suggesting that the level of

analysis of issues (of these types of characters), in and of itself, of what is

normal, the perversion of it somehow into something inane, a differing from

what is normally intuitive, that this all amounts to wisdom of sorts and even

brilliance. At some point in the conversation, the characters cannot agree to

hold to this sort of ridiculous philosophizing even between themselves, and

mainly it becomes clear that they have been engaged in what Socrates would

refer to as the stuff of sophists rather than philosophers in true fashion.

As such, I beg to differ with the description in a torrent description on the

internet that describes the movie as "brilliant, brilliant' (an obvious

reference to the characters in the movie individually, and those that are cut

from the same cloth (who would make such supportive comments) no doubt.



Instead, I suggest that all thinking people, should have this movie and make it

as widely available to others as possible, as a way to put others on guard

against a form of charlatanism. The perpetration of inanity cloaked and dressed

up as intellectual genius because the manner of the person expressing it seems

to suggest that they have that opinion of themselves. the opinion is invalid as

I think anyone with an intelligent mind listening to this trash would have to

agree. In any event, "en guarde" as they say in fencing as that is the best way

to be in the presence of the inane. I have to agree, I cannot replace my

reality by a resort to a journey to the Himalayas in order to find "in the

mountains, a better wisdom than there is in the West". that is a statement made

in the movie by the other main actor Wallace Shawn (also co-writer on the

project), and I am on side with the sentiment altogether, although I somehow

doubt his veracity in making the comment as I read his views and disposition on

things in totality.Michael Rizzo Chessman