DE Weekly: Modernity, Reality, & My Dinner With Andre
Below is an archived email originally sent on March 16, 2026.
Modernity, Reality, & My Dinner With Andre
“I’ve lived in this city all my life. I grew up on the Upper East Side and when I was ten years old, I was rich, I was an aristocrat, riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now, I am 36, and all I think about is money.”
These words are spoken by Wallace Shawn, playing a fictionalized version of himself in the 1981 film My Dinner With Andre.
In this film, old friends Wally and Andre (played by André Gregory) sit down for a dinner to catch up with each other after not seeing one another for five years.
Both were involved in the theater together at one point, but drifted apart after Andre left the theater to travel the world, while Wally stuck around to survive on writing plays.
Much of the first half of the film consists of Andre sharing fantastical stories of his voyages abroad, from the forests of Poland to the sands of the Sahara to monasteries in Tibet. Wally sits there listening, asking him to share more about his travels.
A recurring theme in Andre’s worldview is that, as humans in the modern world, we are somewhat removed from what it means to even be human in this world.
For Andre, modernity (in some sense) has obfuscated the very nature of humanity.
“I mean, we’re just walking around in some kind of fog,” Andre says. “I think we’re all in a trance. We’re walking around like zombies, I don’t…I don’t think we’re even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things, we…we’re just going around all day like unconscious machines and meanwhile there’s all of this rage and worry and uneasiness just building up and building up inside us.”
About halfway through the film, Wally begins to open up and give his own insight. After hearing Andre muse on the big questions in life and give his view on those questions, Wally lets us in on what he has been thinking about while listening to these stories.
He does this by questioning Andre’s line of thinking, actually pushing back in a way that feels as though he is trying to justify his own existence and his own way of living.
He disputes Andre’s notion that we must remove ourselves from the comforts of modernity, whether we must really all venture into a forest or into a desert just to “find” a realer version of ourselves than we normally feel on a daily basis.
He uses the example of an electric blanket he and his wife Debbie have at home; Wally loves this blanket, and couldn’t imagine life without it.
While Andre tells him we aren’t meant to have such comforts, that we must expose ourselves to the cold of the world and forgo such folly as an electric blanket, Wally tells him that he’s wrong; it’s these very comforts that make life that much easier for us to live.
The philosophies of the two friends boil down to this:
Andre believes that we are living mechanically, simply going through the motions in life and deadening ourselves by not acting deliberately, by not pushing back against the comforts of modern life and trying to break free from the minutiae to find a bigger meaning in life.
Wally is more grounded––he’s just trying to write plays, pay his rent, have dinner with his wife, and read, as he says––and, he doesn’t see anything wrong with living this way. He actually finds the notion that we must live outside of society to have any real sense of meaning insulting.
He is compelled, in some very real way, to justify a mode of living that he sees nothing wrong with.
Toward the end of the film, Andre says, “I mean, it’s a very frightening thing, Wally, to have to suddenly realize, that, my God! I thought I was living my life, but in fact I haven’t been a human being. I’ve been a performer. I haven’t been living, I’ve been acting. I’ve acted the role of the father. I’ve acted the role of the husband. I’ve acted the role of the friend. I’ve acted the role of the writer, or director, or what have you.”
This notion––that we are playing at being something rather than just being, indeed, whether we living authentically––is familiar to readers of Existentialism.
We are forced to ask ourselves, are we really just living in a dream? Are we just performers, trying to fit in by playing a role? What would we do if we could create our own circumstances?
While watching the film and listening intently to both Andre and Wally speak, I found myself in a position where I understood both of their philosophies, and found myself agreeing with both of them at different points.
You see, both of them had some truth, some authenticity to add to the conversation. Andre asked the right questions regarding “What is the meaning of it all?” And, Wally had the right answers: it’s whatever you are doing right now.
The reality of the world is that we are often powerless to reshape it, to mold it to one that we feel reflects what it should be. But, when it comes to how we choose to live every day as though we are the sole authors of our lives, well… that much is within our control.
The final scene of the film shows Wally riding home in a taxi, reflecting on a reawakened sense of appreciation for what he sees and experiences.
I think that is the appropriate response after discussing these questions and exploring the depths of our souls for a sense of meaning: we should all feel this way after it is said and done.
As much as My Dinner With Andre is a film about two friends coming to realize they have arrived at two different understandings of life, it is also all about the existential angst, the existential depression that derives from searching for meaning in a world where there seemingly is none.
What Wally realizes about his own life after listening to Andre––that to be an active participant in your own life is enough to make you feel whole––is the takeaway I feel best internalizing myself.
Avoid a world with ever-moving goalposts, therefore, and try and define the parameters wherein you feel fulfilled. Simply, choose to live life the way that feels most tangible to you; a life lived in such a way creates real meaning and appreciation––of everything.
“I treated myself to a taxi. I rode home through the city streets. There wasn't a street, there wasn't a building, that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There, I was buying a suit with my father. There, I was having an ice cream soda after school. And when I finally came in, Debbie was home from work, and I told her everything about my dinner with Andre.” –– Wally, My Dinner With Andre
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
I won’t lie to you, this movie is different: it is literally two people sat at a table for dinner talking for nearly two hours, that’s it. But if you can get past that, and really focus on the conversation, it’s incredibly interesting and, I think, rewarding.
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