DECONSTRUCTING HARRY (1997) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Writer/Director: Woody Allen Starring: Woody Allen, Caroline Aaron, Kirstie Alley, Bob Balaban, Richard Benjamin, Eric Bogosian, Billy Crystal, Judy Davis, Hazelle Goodman, Julie Kavner, Mariel Hemingway, Amy Irving, Eric Lloyd, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Elisabeth Shue, Stanley Tucci, Robin Williams, Philip Bosco, Paul Giamatti, Annette Arnold, Gene Saks
Woody Allen's latest film, "Deconstructing Harry," is his angriest, most vulgar, and most highly sexual film to date. It's also one of his funniest, and his freshest film in a while. Since his divorce from Mia Farrow, he's been in a bit of a slump (starting with "Manhattan Murder Mystery"), making films which are great on their own, but don't posess the lasting power of films like "Annie Hall" and "Hannah and Her Sisters." By taking a big chance with this, telling a story of an awful human being who may really be him or merely the public's perception of him, he creates a film which is a cineamtic breath of fresh air from one of the country's primary and one of its best filmmakers.
The Harry of the title is Harry Block (played by Woody), a whiny, overly-neurotic, amoral, extremely seflish and narcississtic, unfaithful, sniveling sonuvabitch bastard - who's also extremely lovable. Through this complex narrative, one of his most labyrinthine, we get to know this guy through his real life, flashbacks, and through the fictitious world of his novels, where different actors play the literary people who are thinly disguised characters from his real life. Harry, a famed novelist, is also famed at telling exteremely autobiographical stories, exposing secrets in his life for therapy...much like Woody Allen himself has allegedly done (though he always denies it).
When we first meet Harry, he's at a low point in his life. His extremely young girlfriend, Fay (Elisabeth Shue), has just left him and has hitched up with one of his best buds, Larry (Billy Crystal), leaving him more depressed than he usually is. Not to mention the fact that his latest novel, which exposes his affair with one of his ex-wives (Amy Iriving - unrecognizable with her new blond do) sisters, Lucy (Judy Davis), who is less than happy. In the first minutes of the film, we see one of the more comical episodes of the affair in literary form, with his fictitious self (Richard Benjamin) porking the fictitious sister (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) on vacation with their respective families, and almost being caught by a blind grandmother.
Also, Harry has discovered that the next day, he is to awarded an award from his old school (who kicked him out) for his writing, but has no one to go with him. He ends up taking along a sick friend (Bob Balaban), a hooker he solicited the night before named Cookie (Hazelle Goodman, marking the first black person in a lead role in a Woody film - 'cause you know how hard it is to find black people in New York), and his son (Eric Lloyd), whom he abducted from school much to the dismay of his mother and one of his many ex-wives, Joan (Kirstie Alley).
Along the road, he has flashbacks to parts of his life, parts of his stories, and even has hallucinations of characters from his novels popping up to lecture him on his life. The stories play like little vignettes, with lots of cameos from celebrities, but reflect on Harry's life at the time he thinks of them. They also provide lots of comedy, with several little stories standing out, like: a story about a young writer (Tobey Maguire, from "The Ice Storm") who has an affair with a hooker in his critically wounded friend's apartment, only to have Death knock on the door to collect his friend's soul; an anti-semetic story about an old Jewish woman who discovers her husband of 30 years had a previous marriage where he killed four family members and devoured them; a story about an actor (Robin Williams) who becomes blurry in real life (you have to see it to fully understand it); and a story he's working on about him journeying down to hell where Larry is the Devil so he can retreive Fay from him (a sequence which features lots of topless women - a new thing for Woody).
This kind of narcississtic storytelling is immeadiately reminiscent of Woody's worst film (in my opinion), "Stardust Memories," a messy paen to how much he can't stand his fame and his apparent necessity to do comedy. Woody neatly balances the relationship between reality and art, showing that Harry tries to get therapy by exposing his real life to his fans, but also alienates himself from everyone around him. Pretty soon, it seems like there's almost no way of differentiating his real life from his fictitious one (one scene has he and Lucy continually mixing up the names of the people in reality and the ones in his novels.
Is this true of Woody Allen in real life? If one maps out his real and reel lives, one can see a definite connection between the two. For instance, when his marriage was crumbling, he did the bitter "Husbands and Wives." The general public has come to think of the Woody Allen character in all his movies as Woody Allen the person. Hell, even I think of him as some whiny, one-line-shooting, self-hating Jew, and I'm like the resident Woody Allen FAQ. But with this film, Woody seems to be showing that he may put a lot of his personal life in his movies, but to what extent I'm not sure. Is Harry just the general perception of him put on screen, or is this the real Woody Allen, bluntly portrayed (if so, that makes Elisabeth Shue's character the film's Soon-Yi).
The depth of the film is also wonderfully accentuated with Allen's brilliant diretion. The entire film has an edgy feel to it, sometimes disjointed as scenes are cut quickly, sometimes in mid-speech. While this is, yes, a tad annoying, it gives the film the right kind of atmosphere, showing the disjointed nature of his being. In fact, the opening credits (with the cool jazz tune, "Twisted," playing in the background) are juxtaposed with repeated shots of Lucy frantically getting out of a taxi cab, followed by the raunchy sex scene between Richard Benjamin and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, which sets up the film for its almost non-stop raunchiness.
In fact, this film is probably Woody's most randy; even more sexual than his '72 classic "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)." There's some sex scenes, and more sexual jokes than you can shake a stick at. Even Kevin Smith didn't tell this many felatio jokes (my personal favorite, behind when Demi Moore said a Hassidic prayer before going down on Stanley Tucci in one of Harry's stories, was Julia Louis-Dreyfus saying to Richard Benjamin "I grind my teeth."). And Woody finally says "fuck" about fifty times, and even uses "cunt" when angered at a couple points in the movie. It seems that Woody is opening his films up to a wider audience now, since Kevin Smith has paved the way for sex jokes in modern-day cinema.
The film's comic moments (which turn this film into a non-stop laugh-fest) are perfectly interwoven with the film's darker tones, which it has a lot of. This doesn't have the bitter feel of "Husbands and Wives," but it is one of his blackest comedies, showing a man who is corrupt almost to the core, but still can have salvation. Woody's portrayal of this man shows a person who is just awful, yet has some redeeming qualities. Why else would so many people interact with him if he was as bad as Hitler? And how good would this film be if it was only showing how awful he is?
The script is brilliant, and should get at least an Oscar nomination, but many people, I fear, will be turned off by some of his more off-color jokes, like many of his sexual ones, and some ethnic and sexist jokes (he calls a woman "a world-class meshuggener cunt), but this is done to show the character of Harry better. Woody handles the film majestically, presenting it as it were through the eyes of Harry reflecting, but with a deep edge to it. Even Woody's courtship of Fay is done to show how horrible it is, as she is a deep admirer of his work, and he's not respecting her for her own self.
All the actors, who mostly have brief cameos in stories, are wonderful (though Judy Davis does go a bit overboard), with stand-out performances going to Elisabeth Shue, Billy Crystal (who's brilliant as the devil), Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Richard Benjamin, Kirstie Alley, Demi Moore (there's a shock), and, of course, Woody, who gives one of his best performances in years. Though I doubt anyone will get an Oscar nomination (Woody's famous for his supporting actors getting Oscars), they all do wonderfully, even if most are very brief.
"Deconstructing Harry" is one of the freshest, funniest, and all-around fascinating films I've seen this year. Many of his films are paced very slowly, but Woody keeps the film moving at a quick pace, and when it's over, I was sad that it was (by the way, this was my first Woody Allen film seen in a theatre). The point of the film seems to be that one needs to get over themselves and get on with their lives, and this point is never driven into the ground, but realized at the end, as they are in most Woody films. This may be Woody's angriest and narcississtic film in years, which may turn off a lot of people, but it's still brilliant work from an ingenius film craftsman.
MY RATING (out of 4): ****
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