Film review by Kevin Patterson
Deconstructing Harry ** (out of four) R, 1997 Directed and written by Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen, Billy Crystal, Elisabeth Shue.
For his latest film "Deconstructing Harry," Woody Allen assumes the personality of Harry Block, a writer and a truly repulsive human being. Harry's success as a writer is due largely to his ability to take his obsessions with sex and his numerous extramarital affairs and turn them into stories. He is cynical and unpleasant to just about everyone, and he knows it. He even tells women to keep their distance from him emotionally, because in his mind he is the "worst person who ever lived." This is tough material, to be sure, and at times it seems to get the better of Allen.
Allen develops the story in non-linear order, with numerous flashbacks to past incidents in Harry's life as well as on-screen presentations of the semi-autobiographical stories that he has written. At times, the characters from these stories, slightly altered from their real-life models, appear and talk to him. He also makes use of a camera technique whereby there are quick cuts within the same scene, so that Harry is cut off in the middle of a sentence, for example, but then we see him in the same place but in a slightly different posture and talking about something else. While this effect helped to capture Harry's various quirks and gestures at times, it's frankly kind of annoying after a while.
And perhaps that's the best way to describe this movie as a whole - frankly kind of annoying after a while. Allen devotes the film to the study of a thoroughly unlikeable character. This does not make the film bad in and of itself, but somehow it just doesn't carry enough impact to justify asking the audience to swallow such a large amount of obnoxious behavior. A film can have an unsympathetic protagonist and still deliver as a character study, but it has to get inside the person's head somehow and allow the audience to relate to the character. Or it can have an underlying theme that is monumental enough that the characters aren't so important. Neither of these things happen in "Deconstructing Harry"; Allen occasionally introduces an element of genuine pathos to Harry's situation in that he seems defeated by his own insecurities and obsessions, but the way he handles it is so repellent that I mostly just wanted the guy to shut up and go away. And the theme - that a bad person can create good art - isn't striking enough to carry the movie by itself.
Does it still work as a comedy? Well, sort of. Here we have the other problem with this movie, namely that most of the other characters are reduced to the level of sitcom dimwits. Allen might have gotten away with the characterization of Harry Block if he had provided a more easily accessible secondary character, but he doesn't do that either. One of his ex-wives, for example, is his former shrink, and when their marriage breaks up she interrupts her sessions with another patient to step into the next room where he is waiting and shout obscenities at him. Later, there seems to be a real contrast between Harry and the generosity of the newlyweds Larry (Billy Crystal) and Faye (Elisabeth Shue), who come to bail him out of prison just before their honeymoon. Then Faye inexplicably chooses this moment to mention that she once slept with her gynecologist, and as a result she seems like just another sex-obsessed twit.
Granted, these moments are still funny at a basic level, and there are a few moments of truly inspired lunacy (such as when Robin Williams's character suddenly becomes "out of focus" on the screen). There are, however, just as many scenes where we just sit and watch Harry treat other people like dirt, but not in a way that reveals anything new about him as a person. The first fifteen minutes of this film, for example, are quite repulsive and almost unbearably tedious; the people sitting behind me were considering walking out, and while it does get somewhat better after that, I can't say I would have blamed them.
I am not saying that characters always have to be pleasant, nor am I even saying that Allen should not be allowed to make a movie that suggests that all human beings are neurotic and preoccupied with sex, although I would seriously doubt the validity of such a statement. I am saying, however, that the viewer should be given some way to relate to (though not necessarily empathize with) the characters on screen. Aside from the few moments of revealing insight into the mind of Harry Block, "Deconstructing Harry" is not much more than a psychological freak show: we are momentarily shocked at what we see, momentarily amused at the comic moments, and momentarily intrigued that Allen took on such abrasive material. After that, the movie is over, and it's out of sight, out of mind.
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