My Dinner with Andre

While I don’t think this film is easily all for everyone, admittedly I didn’t think it was even for me at first, but I still there’s something out of each of the facets of this film you can take away if you get lost in this conversation with them. While at first it feels like a very tedious dinner talk you got invited to with people you’ve never met before, which it kind of is in a way, if you just give this film a little patience, it unveils itself in a lot of ways where one way or another you find very insightful and relatable aspects, and thoughts of life. And maybe things you’ve never even thought of before. At least that way my transformative experience was with this film. There’s endless profound statements about life and the experience of how we should or do live to ponder about and ones that can help you as a person. To try not to make this review overbearingly long, I’m just going to put some thing down I wrote in my notes while watching the film  One of the first things in the film I caught is when, Andre talks about his experience on Halloween of going into a 6 feet deep grave for a half hour. While seemingly an unusual and bizarre Halloween ritual at first, it holds much value to our mindset of life and coming to terms with the morbid reality that one day we will face the mortality of death. Andre talks about how uncomfortable and painful that was but also how it made him think differently about life. See being  aware of how much worse death may be than being alive makes us want to live and take in every breath as something meaningful. That’s how Andre saw his experience and many should too.  Possibly the most touched on and important topic Andre and Wallace talk about is the government ran and how it is shaped to make us think. We live in a world that’s held back by the government’s greed for money but we don’t even realize it because of how society programs us to think that always working is how the world should run when in reality it’s making us robots. Living in this nonstop life in pursuit of work roles, accomplishments and certain clear cut goals makes us feel like we have to live and absolute certainty of things but never in confusion  But the reality is all of those thoughts of anger, distress dismay make us human. Our goals and roles of trying to perform a certain set job in society holds us back from showing the most relatable parts of us that are suppressed: confusion, self-identity struggles and spontaneity from our own minds. Living out the ways of this world and government ran society detaches us at times from our perception of humanity.  People think being so direct about conflict and problems with peers is unusual and rude but it’s really just a mere thing apart of life that solves problems. Yes, maybe having that man to man talk about you someone you love doing something wrong is uncomfortable with the convicting and judging nature it brings but it’s the only way we can get to the root of the problems we need to solve. Maybe being indirect is a more practical and respectful way to confront someone but maybe being direct and blunt about it may make it register into their head more what we really want to get out of the talk rather coming off as misunderstanding  Towards the end, Andre brings up a conversation pertaining to with romance and love. He basically says how love dies out not because of their company getting old and stale after a certain time but because we decide to stop our curiosity about them and stop interacting with their mind. Since we’ve been with them for an extended amount of time. We think we’ve learned all about them but the truth is the human mind and thoughts stretch endlessly and we never know it. There’s always something new to learn about someone but our minds tell us to think otherwise  So maybe this film could be perceived as some kind of overkill yap fest or insanely tedious but if you give it a real chance it’s a must watch. And even if at times it does feel like the way I described, it’s a relatable and very desirable feeling to just sit at a table and talk with someone about life. Just vent to them about what’s on your mind instead of having those thoughts caved into your brain with nowhere to be unleashed. In a way, we all yearn for a dinner with guys like Andre and Wallace. During the hard and tiresome nature of life, something is just so refreshing about meeting with someone teeming with that exact same curiosity and yearning for a deeper connection to ponder, wonder, and talk about all there is to know and figure out about how to navigate this troubled world around us.