'My Dinner With Andre' and the Desire to Escape the Terror of Our Modern World

"...actually, for two or three years now, Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out."

I often dream about getting off the grid. Buying a farm somewhere and moving my family to some remote place where we’d raise chickens, while we continue to work.

Besides the fact that I don’t know anything about farming, the dream is not a total fantasy. It’s something we could probably do, considering my wife and I both work remotely (assuming we have internet).

What’s striking is how many people I know who share this dream. Numerous friends I speak with talk of their own fantasy, and some of them are taking concrete steps to make their dream a reality.

At some point it occurred to me my dream was neither particularly unique or new. Many people reading this article probably identify with it to some extent, and it was even the theme of a popular 1980s movie.

The film My Dinner With Andre (1981) explores the phenomenon I described above, as well as the conditions of our society that drive people to feeling this way.

My Dinner With Andre is one of the strangest movies you’ll ever watch, but it’s a very good one. (It was also a huge success, making more than $5 million at the box office on a $475,000 budget.) An American comedy-drama directed by Louis Malle, My Dinner With Andre follows the story of two old friends, Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, who reunite for dinner at a restaurant. (Readers will likely recognize Shawn, a famous actor who played Vizzini in The Princess Bride. Andre is less well-known, but I remember him from Demolition Man.)

The movie centers around their conversation as they discuss their lives and experiences since they last met. Through their dialague, we get an insight into the different paths their lives have taken and how it has shaped them as individuals. The film offers an intimate look at friendship, life choices, and the power of conversations to shape our perspectives.

That a movie that involves two men sitting together in a restaurant having dinner and discussing their lives can be high entertainment might surprise some but people. But it is, and the movie is high entertainment because the dialogue is so engrossing. So real. The entire conversation “Wally” and Andre is captivating, but the most striking part comes when Andre talks about the feeling I described above.

See, actually, for two or three years now, Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out. That we really should feel like Jews in Germany in the late thirties. Get out of here. Of course, the problem is where to go, cause it seems quite obvious that the whole world is going in the same direction. See, I think it’s quite possible that the 1960s represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future now, and that, from now on there’ll simply be all these robots walking around, feeling nothing, thinking nothing.

What is driving Andre to feel this way? It’s the belief—and I know how crazy it sounds—this he’s living in a society that has become an Orwellian nightmare, “a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money.”

I’ve posted a clip of the video below and a transcription of the conversation for your convenience. Watch it and think about it. Then ask yourself if America has gotten better since 1981 or worse.

I share this not to frighten people or make them feel hopeless. On the contrary, I share it to make people hopeful. To remind everyone (including myself) that we’re not robots; we’re humans with agency. We don’t have to live in the Matrix. We can leave it.

We may not have the power to change the world, but we have the power over ourselves and choices. That’s a reassuring truth for body and soul.

Andre: Okay. Yes. We’re bored. We’re all bored now. But has it every occurred to you, Wally, that the process that creates this boredom that we see in the world now may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money? And that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks. And it’s not just a question of individual survival, Wally, but that somebody who’s bored is asleep? And somebody who’s asleep will not say “no”?

Andre: See, I keep meeting these people, I mean, uh, just a few days ago I met this man whom I greatly admire, he’s a Swedish physicist, Gustav Björnstrand, and he told me that he no longer watches television, he doesn’t read newspapers, and he doesn’t read magazines. He’s completely cut them out of his life because he really does feel that we’re living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare now, and that everything that you hear now contributes to turning you into a robot.

Andre: And when I was at Findhorn, I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted his life to saving trees. Just got back from Washington, lobbying to save the redwoods, he’s 84 years old, and he always travels with a backpack cause he never knows where he’s gonna be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn, he said to me, “Where are you from?” and I said, “New York.” He said, “Ah, New York. Yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” I gave him different banal theories. He said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.”

Andre: He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they’ve built. They’ve built their own prison. And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners, and as a result, they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or to even see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree and he said, “This is a pine tree.” He put it in my hand and he said, “Escape before it’s too late.”

Andre: See, actually, for two or three years now, Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out. That we really should feel like Jews in Germany in the late thirties. Get out of here. Of course, the problem is where to go, cause it seems quite obvious that the whole world is going in the same direction. See, I think it’s quite possible that the 1960s represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future now, and that, from now on there’ll simply be all these robots walking around, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there’ll be nobody left almost to remind them that there once was a species called a human being, with feelings and thoughts, and that history and memory are right now being erased, and soon nobody will really remember that life existed on the planet.

Andre: Now, of course, Björnstrand feels that there’s really almost no hope, and that we’re probably going back to a very savage, lawless, terrifying period.