Deconstructing Harry
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Movie Reviews of Deconstructing Harry
Movie Review: Perhaps the greatest film ever made
Summary: 5 Stars
Astonishingly honest work of artMovie Review: The Woodman in the Raw. Great Stuff. A bit strong.
Summary: 4 Stars
`Deconstructing Harry', written and directed by Woody Allen, may set the record for famous name cameos in Allen's pictures, with the added twist that you have famous actors playing the parts of other famous name actors in the same movie, as when, for example, Kirsty Ally, one of the Allen character wives, is played by Demi Moore in a playing out of one of the pieces of fiction represented in the movie.
I have often touted the virtue of rewatchability in almost all of Allen's movies. After all, why buy a DVD or tape of a movie if there is no value in watching it more than once. With this movie, it is absolutely essential that you watch it at least three times to understand what is going on, as the movie freely, and with relatively little warning, switches back and forth between cinema reality and Harry's (the Allen character) fiction. In some movies, having trouble keeping track of the plot threads means this is simply a bad movie. There are things in this movie that may have been done poorly, but the parallel thread lines between reality and fiction is not one of them.
This is certainly one of Allen's two or three most highly biographical movies, the others being `Stardust Memories' and `Radio Days'. It is not even a big stretch to make the Allen surrogate character a writer rather than a film maker (as in `Stardust Memories') since Allen did a lot of short story writing for the `New Yorker' before film making took all of his time. All of Allen's favorite subjects, primarily love, sex, death, Judaism, parents, and creativity are here. Books have been written about the themes in Allen's movies. `Deconstructing Harry' could easily take a book or at least a long monograph in itself to explicate all the ideas going on in the real and fictional threads.
Allen even brings in parodies of classic fiction in his references to both Dante's `Divine Comedy' and Milton's `Paradise Lost'. For good measure, there is a short riff on Bergman's grim reaper character in a reprise from his appearance in `Love and Death'. I will not give Allen too much credit for such an obscure reference, but his visit to Hell (borrowed from Greek mythology) makes Hell seem almost like a fun place to be, even for the damned, if the damned subjects happen to have a yen for a little sweaty bondage. The reference I speak of is to the etched illustrations of Dante's `Inferno' done, I believe by a 19th century artist which provided a lot of guilty pleasures as an adolescent in the grownup library stacks.
While this movie is a thoroughly Woody Allen piece, I did get some sense that more than a little influence from Kevin Smith seems to have crept into the dialogue, as the frequency of strong four letter words is dramatically higher than in any other Allen movie. This is improbable, as Smith's first movie, `Clerks' I think just came out shortly before the release of `Deconstructing Harry'. But, the cuss a minute dialogue does remind one of Smith's favorite character, Jay of `Jay and Silent Bob' fame.
The quality of the filming and editing in this movie makes one wonder whether some of the sloppy transitions within and between scenes were not intentional. One can easily imagine that the shooting schedule was such that you only had Robin Williams or Richard Benjamin or Demi Moore or Billy Crystal for a day or a half a day, so if you didn't get perfect shots of them on that day, Allen and his editor possibly did the best they could with what they had. There is a kind of choppyness I simply have never seen in any of Allen's movies before or since this one. One thing which makes me think this obviously choppy editing is intentional is the opening scene behind the credits where the Judy Davis character is seen repeatedly leaving her cab at Harry's apartment in order to beat on him for including their marriage in his latest published piece of fiction. The differences in the 5 or 6 times this sequence is shown are almost random, parodying, in a way, the opening to `Manhattan' where the Allen character's voice over is working through various drafts of an opening line to a piece of fiction. So, instead of literally quoting `Manhattan', Allen shows multiple attempts at editing the same scene. Another intentional effect that suggests the choppy editing is intentional is the riff that makes the actor character played by Robin Williams to literally go out of focus.
The story is really not quite as neat as the two other biographical movies, even though `Stardust Memories' does contain a lot of ambiguity between the cinematic and the real. It is also clearly not as polished as most of his other movies, especially the high gloss works such as `Crimes and Misdemeanors' and `Hannah and Her Sisters'. In some ways, it has the same manic quality of his very early movies such as `Take the Money and Run' and `Bananas'.
And yet, it is easily one of the most interesting about which to spin theories on Allen's sources and his messages. I would only recommend this movie to someone who is fond of Allen's movies already. I would certainly not recommend it to anyone who has never seen or never liked a Woody Allen movie. But, for the faithful, this is pure gold, and funny to boot!
Movie Review: Woody at his NASTIEST!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the meanest, nastiest, most vicious we've seen Woody Allen. And so much of it is directed towards himself. We certaily all know that Allen's films are very much about himself and his persona, but this one is filled with a heavy dose of self-loathing. It also has very little good to say about anyone else, particularly women. It's just a bit frightening how much vitriol Allen has. His character (a writer instead of a film mater) only seems to like his son and a prostitute.But as the movie progresses, he gets little telling glimpses of the effect he has on others, and how this has helped make him so unhappy. Will he change...doubtful. But at the end, we feel like maybe we've gotten a fairly unsugarcoated look at how Woody Allen really feels about himself, his art and the women in his life.
The movie is really, really funny. It's extremely foul-mouthed (do not let kids near it...it makes Mira Sorvino in MIGHTY APHRODITE seem quite tame). You also get to see some familiar actors doing some pretty down and dirty things...Julia Louis Dreyfuss in a rather explicit scene with Richard Benjamin...that alone is an eye-brow raiser. The normally sweet Tobey Maguire is a sex-crazed younger version of Allen...to comic effect. Judy Davis (one of the best actresses anywhere, period) is funny as a pistol-wielding former lover of Allen's, spouting intelligent (and extremely obscene) insults at him, while slowly coming unglued.
We see a number of Allen's character's short stories acted out, and those are often amusing little ditties, although the one with the old Jewish couple is just silly. Another one with Robin Williams (as a man who is becoming "unfocused") is very amusing.
One excellent scene has Allen surprising his sister with a visit while he's on a drive to upstate New York to get an award. She's married to a very conservative Jewish man, and has really turned her life over to a life some might call zealot-like (certainly Allen does). The pain of Allen's and his sister's relationship is palpable...there's real pain on both sides...and real love. Something we don't see often in Allen's glib, cynical world.
The cast is unformly great (with one exception...in a moment). Allen, Davis, Dreyfuss, etc. Robin Williams makes a brief, amusing appearance, along with Julie Kavner. Imagine those two married!! Demi Moore, in a tiny part, is tolerable, and Billy Crystal is amusing as the Devil (yep, Allen's character goes to hell towards the end, and the conception of hell is pretty funny and pretty elaborate for a Woody Allen movie).
The exception to all the praise is Elizabeth Shue. I'm sorry, but she seemed to have spent all her talent with LEAVING LAS VEGAS. She is simply terrible in this film (and others, like THE HOLLOW MAN & COUSIN BETTE), playing the part of Allen's current love interest. Seeing Allen with all these young beautiful women in movie after movie is always hard...but they usually come across as intelligent and perhaps it is the shared intelligence that Allen and these young beauties have that make their relationships tolerable. Shue, on the other hand, comes across as vacuous. She almost looks like she's reading cue cards. The few scenes she is in totally grind the movie to a halt.
But, that flaw aside, see this movie if you like Woody Allen, and frankly, maybe if you don't like him. He might agree with you!
Movie Review: Harry Block: "Six shrinks later, three wives down the line, and I still can't get my life together".
Summary: 4 Stars
"Deconstructing Harry"(1997) - written/directed and starred in by Woody Allen.
"Deconstructing Harry" (1996) is Woody Allen's angriest, busiest, most neurotic, most complex, most personal with the funniest one-liners film that effortlessly moves from past to present, from reality to the world of imagination, and from funny bits to contemplation on serious and personal subjects so rapidly that you have to watch closely in order not to get lost in all these worlds. Allen plays Harry Block, a famous writer suffering from the writer's block and also from inability to survive in real world, to be happy and to make the people in his life happy, "Six shrinks later, three wives down the line, and I still can't get my life together". Harry can't get his life together but he can write and he has put himself and all people he knows including his wives, friends, girl-friends, and his sister into his last novel. His art imitated life so closely that real people recognized themselves in the fictional characters very easily and now Harry lives through the nightmare of confronting near everybody he has ever known as well as the fictional characters, offended, infuriated, and insulted, who all rush in anger to face him: "You have no values. With you it's all nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm, and orgasm."
By its structure, "Deconstructing Harry" reminds the earlier film by one of Allen's favorite directors, Ingmar Bergman, "Wild Strawberries". As Professor Borg, Harry Block travels by car to upstate New York, where his college that expelled him as an undergraduate now wants to honor him as a world renowned belletrist. He travels by car with three unlikely companions, a hooker, a friend with bad heart, and his 9-years-old son whom he had kidnapped from school. As in "Wild Strawberries", Allen's film provides sincere, intelligent, and emotional contemplations of life's disappointment, regrets, and losses but at the same time, it is hilarious as only Allen's films can be. One of the best scenes of the film is Harry's descent on the elevator to air-conditioned Hell where in the ninth circle he meets the Devil who looks very much like Billy Crystal. Another wonderful scene concerns a married couple where after thirty years of happy uneventful marriage a wife learns some interesting eating habits from her husband's previous life. I can go on for long time. As often in the case of Allen's movies, with the modest running time of 96 minutes, "Deconstructing Harry" is expertly shot, boasts an amazing cast (Billy Crystal, Judy Davis, Bob Balaban, Elisabeth Shue, Demi Moore, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobey Maguire, and Stanley Tucci just to name a few), and is in my opinion one of the most interesting and personal Allen's films.
Movie Review: NOT YOUR USUAL STRAIGHT-AHEAD BRAINLESS HOLLYWOOD NARRATIVE
Summary: 4 Stars
the title ought to tip you off that an approach to viewing this film is required more sophisticated and acute than the usual Hollywood bright mights and mirrors delusions which accompany or popcorn.
In fact the first ten minutes of the lucious Louise DReyfuss pleasuring the elder Richard Benjamin are awful in itself, especially as an introduction to this film. Only later does it begin dimly to dawn upon us that these intriguing characters (just what is Dreyfuss's MOTIVATION here?), plus the iconic blind grandmother witness, are merely characters in Woody Allen (Harry)'s commercial rewrite of his life. In fact, we vainly come to miss the presence of some of these characters with concern for their outcome.
Once you get a hang of the narrative structure, it's pretty clear what is going on. In fact it is not far from Play it again sam, when fantasy (here formalized in writing) crosses with reality. I find this character of course more pathetic than any earlier character, and more true. THe whole episode of the lost son is especially telling, when one considers Mr. Allen's and his son Satchmo's suffering at the eccentric and vindictive hands of the bizarre and abusive Mia Farrow. And so the reality of Mr. Allen's life crosses the reality of his character Harry's life, which is further crossed by Harry's fantasizing into his writing as a means of making reality more bearable.
I really wish nondrinkers would not overestimate their capabilites after chugging various whiskeys.
The editing was so jarring it seemed amateurish and I thought my new DVD was choking on my brand new used disk, with several incomprehensible jumps, until I realized that was part of the deconstruction message as well.
THere is much to like and to think about here. How could a grown man believe a real out there street whore could hold the secret to peace and happiness and the resolution of our tragedies, and yet so much of us do just that, or they would have no job.
But those first few minutes one would not wish to see again. I can never look at Seinfeld in the same way, where the wonderful Dreyfuss is always the pratfall for the callous jokes of others.
A very nervous and jarring and challenging film, one worth seeing, but I would prefer to see Sam, or The Front, or take the money and Run