MovieChat Forums > My Dinner with Andre (1981) Discussion > Andre is bipolar

Andre is bipolar

posted 8 years ago by pinansky
11 replies | jump to latest

I kept coming back to this thought. Andre is clearly a manic-depressive. We find him on a down swing. But he describes his adventures it was obvious he was describing manic episodes. The delusions flights of fancy, hallucinations, grandiose plans hastily made then abandoned as he "comes down".

The difference is a poor person exhibiting the same symptoms is medicated or institutionalized but a wealthy one who can afford to indulge his whims is written off as eccentric and far from being stigmatized, has his mental illness immortalized on film in some kind of sick spectacle.

Mainly the film made me feel bad for Andre's wife and kids who probably want for nothing materially but in exchange have to deal with the stress of being prisoners of this maniac's constant flitting in and out of their lives, wreaking havoc with his whims and flights of fancy.

To say the least, i can certainly see why Wally was avoiding him for years.

[–] Owlwise 8 years ago

Reducing Andre's experiences to mere pathology misses the point. What he was doing, in fact, was trying to explore & renew his inner world -- something that was quite common in the late 1960s/early 1970s, when most of his adventures took place. It's not so common now, because the current social model tends to turn everything into a diagnosis. But for a lot of people, and creative people in particular, the sort of life insights he sought during those years isn't so very unusual at all. You may well be confusing insight with illness.

[–] pinansky 8 years ago

You miss the point, visual and auditory hallucinations at the height of mania isn't artsy it's crazy. You're also ignoring the depressive down swings, crying jags, etc...

His illness is enabled by his wealth and those who benefit from it looking the other way and indulging his behavior. If he was a working stiff and acted the same way he would have been a ward of nurse rachet. In fact those men in cuckoos nest were far less ill

[–] Owlwise 8 years ago

I think each of us is looking past each other, due to our different temperaments & worldviews.

Also, labels like "crazy" & "sane" are a bit more arbitrary than we often realize or admit, being defined by whatever the cultural norm at the time is. A few decades down the line, our culture of diagnostic pathology may well be seen as somewhat crazy itself. (Or it may not, who knows?)

And one doesn't have to be "crazy" to see things. Consider hypnagogic hallucinations, for instance:

Sleep related hallucinations are a parasomnia. A parasomnia involves undesired events that come along with sleep. Sleep related hallucinations are imagined events that seem very real. They are mainly visual. They may also involve your senses of sound, touch, taste and smell. They may even involve a sense of motion.

It is easy to confuse them with a state of dreaming. You may not be sure if you are awake or asleep. They may be similar to nightmares. But when you wake up from a nightmare, you are aware that it occurred while you were asleep. It is clearly recognized as a dream. It is not thought to be real.

They generally occur at one of the two following times:

•As you are about to fall asleep (hypnagogic)

•As you are just waking up (hypnopompic)

(from www.sleepeducation.org)

Under stress or extraordinary circumstances, the psyche can allow us to "see" a great many things, the material of the Unconscious apparently projected outward onto the world. This isn't momentary craziness, but simply an out-of-the-ordinary experience many people can & do have at times. And Andre was in a very different mindspace during those years of struggling to find answers, making him quite open to such experiences. Are they "real"? Perhaps not in an outward sense, but certainly so from an inward perspective.

(Is love "real"? Does it exist in an outward, tangible, measureable form? Is it any less "real" for being experienced within? A sense of awe? Beauty? Grief?)

[–] moonunit-00839 8 years ago

But calling Andre "creative" really does come across like an excuse. This breakout psycho stuff is Western disease of affluence, and in a way, that's the message he reinforces in the movie. What self respecting secular humanist isn't drawn to new age buddhism, as both outlet for and admission of the pressures of modern oversocialized society? I don't know how creative he is. He's certainly not more creative than he is rich. In fact he seems extremely conservative, not in the political sense of the word, but in the literal sense (Don't dare disagree with him on politics though). Cramped, rigid, and uptight, the quintessential New England liberal. People like him caused all these problems in society, now they're the ones who are going to lead the way in fixing them? Well excuse me pal, but hippies have come and gone. You're only about 20 years behind the times. That's some real cutting edge progressivism. He even looks like George Bush.

[–] Owlwise 8 years ago

Hardly a New England liberal, coming from a Jewish family that fled from Hitler.

And I'm not calling "creativity" an excuse, I'm simply noting that the creative mind does indeed often seek out intense experience ... and if he has the means to pursue it, why not? Why shouldn't someone -- everyone -- try to discover the meaning & purpose of his or her life? That's one of the points he's making, that we all too often accept the pre-imagined, pre=digested model that's presented to us from birth & never go beyond it -- don't even realize that there may be something beyond it.

In any case, someone like Andre hardly caused all the problems that he's diagnosing & addressing. Certainly he's reacting to them & struggling to cope with them. And his bleak vision of the future as an immense, world-encompassing machine run by money, power, and distracting illusions definitely seems to be here now.

As for hippies -- well, they were right about a lot of things, as were the Beats before them, and the Transcendentalists before them, and the English Romantics before them, as well as many others. Chief among those right things was the necessity of not merely changing the world outwardly, but changing it inwardly as well. That remains true today.

Personally, I agree with you that endless affluence & mindless consumption are monstrous diseases devouring every human being they colonize. And the character of Andre in the film would agree with that as well.

One thing more. The film is obviously about midlife, among many other things, and as such it's a very personal & intimate film in that regard. Having gone through it myself, I can attest that questions of personal meaning & purpose become very pressing, and the first half of one's life is called into question on all fronts. Andre is just emerging from that encounter battered & remade to some extent; Wally is facing it fearfully as it approaches for him.

Edit:

This recent interview with Andre & Wally sheds more light on their actual charactera, as opposed to the somewhat fictionalized versions of themselves that they play in the film:

http://www.vulture.com/2015/06/andre-gregory-wallace-shawn-interview.html

[–] lifesoboring 8 years ago

Well put. Being manic can have a strong creative aspect to it, which is valuable and should be utilized. Inevitably it will be, if the person has a creative outlet to express it. If he is not a theater director, if he is just a "working stiff" he might suddenly wake up one day and begin doing paintings, at a mad pace. You might find your creative outlet out of the blue. The first commentator here, the person who kicked off the discussion, has a chip on his shoulder about class. If you are not rich, and go manic, you are not going to be "Nurse Ratchet-ed" unless you do some very antisocial behavior. You can be put under mental health care, and put on medication, (which is probably positive) but probably you will not be committed unless you do some sort of criminal act. (As would the rich guy). The first commentator is saying that Andre is a rich crazy guy, so he's lucky he can get away with this stuff. Whereas if you're not rich you must pay the consequences. Then he judges him for being selfish and inattentive to his family, which is irrelevant. Should we find him less interesting because he is not as good of a family man as he ought to be? The point isn't to judge the character's character. He's trying to make a point about social class and injustice that doesn't fit in this context.

Hippies, Beats and other bohemians had the right ideas.

I actually started watching this film on youtube (I watched it years ago), but turned it off after 20 minutes, bored with it. Maybe Andre's stories get better as they go on? I remember years ago, when first watching it, being enthralled by his extended monologues, but the thrill seems to have faded. Thus,I came to this site to see what people had to say about the film these days, and I saw this bipolar discussion, and it made sense. Andre could very well have been on a manic high while having had these experiences.

[–] Owlwise 8 years ago

Yes, the question is: What precisely is "normal" or "mentally ill" anyway? Some of it, perhaps much of it, comes down to how they're defined by any society, what's acceptable & what's not. Things in the 1960s/70s were very different from now, and ideas were more fluid & open. This is one of those things that goes back & forth between openness & rigidity -- and even as someone who leans heavily toward the openness side of things myself, I can see the need for some secure framework. The ideal is a balance between the two.

The other thing to remember is that Andre himself has very mixed feelings about the life he lived during those wandering years, and is unsure as to whether they helped or harmed him. Perhaps a mixture of both? Perhaps he realized that there is no single, permanent answer that fits all sizes & all occasions. He's still searching at the time he's speaking with Wally, and for all his apparent certainty about many of his ideas, he definitely enjoys, wants & even needs the counterpoints he gets from Wally.

The ending of the film is poetic & ambiguous, as unfinished as any life is unfinished until death comes for it. Wally has certainly been changed by the evening's experience ... but I feel certain that Andre has been equally changed as well. Life is not over, the searching is not over, there are possibilities, obstacles, joys, terrors, questions ahead -- the thing is to be open to them -- not accept them blindly, but not dismiss them, either. Live them.

Enjoying this discussion! :)

[–] xanthas (3215) 2 years ago

I am also reminded of the Transcendentalist movement of 1800s New England.

[–] Owlwise (1535) 2 years ago

Very much so. Thanks for making that point.

[–] trippycheez 8 years ago

I've seen the movie twice now, the second time after witnessing a friend experience some sort of manic mental break.

My friend, who I'll call "Larry," came to visit out of the blue. He talked *nonstop* for hours about the strange coincidences in his life... finding meaning in small interactions with spiritual mentor figures, like people in a homeless encampment and the minister of a random small church by the highway. Larry seemed to believe that he might be receiving messages from God, and that he might be some sort of new Messiah or prophet figure. He could *not sleep* and any time a new person would come over, he would tell them all the exact same stories in the same words, without stopping. His basic message seemed to be that magic was everywhere, and everyone in the world needs to appreciate everyone else, because we are all connected.

I'm not a psychologist, and if Larry was having some sort of important quest-like experience and wasn't hurting anyone else, who was I to judge? So I mainly just listened and asked questions. In the back of my mind, I was worried, and the experience of being around Larry was extremely exhausting and concerning. But I was willing to have an open mind about all of it.

Other mutual friends believed Larry had gone insane. They tried to talk him down. In the end, the manic experience seemed to wear off, and Larry seems to have gone back to normal (as far as I know).

Seeing this movie again, I very much related to Wallace at the beginning. The dread of going to see Andre in the first place (a bit like how exhausted I was by being around Larry). The way Andre just talked and talked and talked with these series of interconnected anecdotes, symbols, and coincidences. Andre mentions at one point that he is really tired (so maybe he wasn't sleeping). And Wallace just sits there asking questions for such a long time.

Now, I'm hesitant to label Andre as "mentally ill." Our society has labeled behavior like his as "manic." He was definitely on a strange path that could be bizarre or inconvenient for those around him. But he seems to be functioning on a basic level as a person. And it might also be possible that he developed some new and interesting perspectives by sailing off the brink of reality, the same way Larry's message of interconnectedness resonated with me in a strange way when I heard it. Even if I didn't buy the whole "prophet of God" thing, I started to appreciate small things more. To try and be a bit more understanding of others.

Whatever sort of trip Andre was on, I think it could have true value. To dismiss his whole experience with a label like "psychological breakdown" is too unnecessarily medicalizing. We've always had mystics and seers, people who see things the rest of us can't see. I'm resistant to categorizing whatever our modern-day versions may be as insane.

[–] Owlwise (1535) 8 months ago

Beautifully said. I'm reminded of the late R.D. Laing's premise that breakdown is sometimes breakthrough.