My Dinner with Andre (Divx).avi

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082783




Our recent survey of the torrents on the net revealed only XVID versions of this movie and in lower video resolution than what we offer here - the best at

720 X 480 and perfectly adequate audio for what is a movie set in a restaurant involving a discussion between the two characters that are its subject for critical review.



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 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. 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 seeming as antagonistic towards a complete deference to what is being said by the character "Andre", the fact is that fundamentally these two fellas 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, this difference in style will cause differences to occur and to crop up. What is more worth noting is that the level of conversation they are both engaged in is the stuff of their genre in the way of evolutionary development. They are not people 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 the 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, regardless of its validity and value, (in a real sort of way0 seems to command the entire scope of the movie as a way of suggesting that analysis 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. The characters cannot even agree to hold to this sort of ridiculous philosophizing as it were, and mainly it is 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 an xvid torrent 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 doubt his veracity in making the comment as i read his views and disposition on things in totality.



This is a DivX conversion just made earlier this week from an original disc using the Divx.com converter, and is great quality indeed compared to the other offerings of this title on the net as I write this note. Regrettably, no subtitles were present on the disc, nor could we find any on the Internet websites that offer them normally. Michael (Rizzo) Chessman