‘What we need is a new language.’ ~ MY DINNER WITH ANDRE
Here is a video clip from the very astute and prescient film My Dinner With Andre, giving new meaning to everything one takes for granted.
Watch out for the last part of the speech where the ‘looking glass’ is mentioned, a point that served as an inspiration for Behind The Mirror Movie.
Listening to this dialog, all kinds of premises are reexamined. The prospect of us living in a new dark age suddenly comes to light.
It’s a harrowing but, at the same time, sobering thought.
Also, it’s one thought out of many, one perspective out of numerous others. Turning this point of view into a dogma would defeat the purpose. Keeping it in mind as just one of the many ways the world manifests, it helps a great deal in dealing with what lies ahead.
The point is to subject everything to scrutiny and arrive at one’s own conclusions, come what may.
A tall task, one which the future generations will be talking about, looking back and analyzing what happened during our lifetime, how we dealt with the challenges of our age, just as we look back at our ancestors and judge them and their culture and history and life choices at the time, separating the golden ages from the dark ones. A great spiral forward, with loops and circles, upsides and downturns to captivate even the most resistant acolyte, throwing off the most adventurous traveler, the most astute thinker, the most incredibly tough go-getter.
It has all happened before, and will happen again, the same but different. Different but with strong parallels. With rhyme and reason, and a sense of deep irony, the way through which involves the willingness to stay with the process long enough to see the light, or at least help others set the foundations for a brighter future, kindling it in the dark.
It’s a tough gig, but that’s what makes everything worthwhile.
Like a two-time adage in those two-dime stores with their two-dime inspirational frames you hang on the kitchen wall says, the point of life is ‘to skid in broadside, totally worn out and proclaiming “Wow, what a ride!”‘
Not bad for a two-dime adage.
As for My Dinner With Andre, it’s one of the forgotten jewels of cinema. Priceless, and worth checking out.
From the bays of Pearl Coast,
Dive in crystal waters, be find a shiny pearl.
PS – Other notable ‘mirror’ influences include Orphée by Jean Cocteau, A Room Of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, and the works of a certain Charles Horton Cooley.
To be continued . . .