A lot of moviegoers aren't going to like Woody Allen's latest film, Deconstructing Harry — the New York Daily News, for one, called it "a foul mouthed screed" that leaves the audience "miserable and cringing."
True, Harry is often crude — its language and sexual frankness make it the raunchiest Allen film so far. Beyond that, if you interpret Allen's work, and this film in particular, as thinly veiled autobiography, and place it in context of his recent public trials (his bitter breakup with Mia Farrow and the tabloid pillorying of his relationship and recent marriage to Farrow's step-daughter, Soon-Yi Previn), you could see the movie as little more than Allen's bitter diatribe against those who have assaulted him for his private life. Indeed, some critics have, including the one from the Daily News.
But, if you can move beyond seeing the film in this light — and I think you should — if you accept Allen's own argument that the movie is a piece of fiction and that its lonely and beleaguered writer-protagonist is an invention, it's possible to see that Deconstructing Harry is a brilliantly crafted work, not as pleasant to watch as some of Allen's films with a more romantic world-view, say Manhattan or Annie Hall or the more recent Mighty Aphrodite, but evidence nonetheless that Allen has not lost the genius that has made him one of our greatest filmmakers.
Rather than a portrait of Allen himself, Deconstructing Harry seems more like a film about the persona that tabloids and hypercritical press might have created for Allen. It centers on a novelist named Harry Block (Allen) who has come to a miserable pass in his life. His young lover/former prot‚g‚, Fay (Elisabeth Shue), has recently left him to marry one of his oldest friends, Larry (Billy Crystal). At the same time, injuries Block has caused to friends and family members by portraying them in his work (much of it highly autobiographical) have left him all but alone; his only comfort comes from his son, a product of his second marriage, from his psychiatrist, and from the prostitutes he hires. Indeed, although his books have all been successful, critically and commercially, he is all but broke; at one point, he confesses that he has squandered everything on a succession of shrinks and on hookers. Until now a prolific writer, he is mired in a fit of writer's block that frightens him, because his sole identity seems to come from his writing.
As the film opens, he has learned that a college from which he was expelled wants to honor him for his work. Embarrassed to show up for the ceremony alone, he asks person after person to accompany him, even beseeching his former lover to skip her wedding to go along with him. Everyone turns him down, and so he hires a hooker (Hazelle Goodman) to attend the ceremony with him, and kidnaps his son from school for the day. At the last moment, one of his friends (Bob Balaban) fittingly, a man with no family of his own, joins the trip.
Throughout, the film shifts between Block's reality and fiction, weaving excerpts from some of his novels with encounters Block has with former wives and lovers. At first, the line is clear — we know when we're within the pages of one of Block's books and when we're with Block, as he argues with his sister or with the mother of son (Kirstie Alley) or with his former sister-in-law/lover, Lucy (Judy Davis). Once he's underway to the college ceremony, however, the line blurs, and he begins to confront a fictional version of himself (Richard Benjamin) or of the sister-in-law with whom he had an affair (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who tell him truths about his relationships with his family and lovers. Near the end of film, Block himself enters fantasy, most notably in a scene in which he descends to hell to rescue Fay from Larry, who, he's convinced, is the devil himself.
Partly because of the deft way it moves between fantasy and reality, Deconstructing Harry is a marvelous piece of filmmaking. But it also succeeds because Allen carefully blends some rather broad humor (largely in the fantasy sequences) with some moving dramatic scenes from Block's life, making it clear that while Block is a very funny writer, he's one miserable son-of-a-bitch when he's away from his typewriter.
The humor in Harry ranks with that of vintage Allen. For example, in one of Block's stories set against a garish Star Wars-themed bar mitzvah , a Jewish matron discovers that her husband of 30 years had not only brutally murdered his first wife and their two children, but ate them. Confronted by her, he doesn't dodge the accusation. He merely says, "All right. If I tell you why I did it, will you promise not to noodge me?" In another story, a film actor (Robin Williams) has to consult a doctor when he finds out that he is perpetually out of focus.
Perhaps the most funny scene is the one in hell. On his way down to the lowest level of hell for the confrontation with Larry, Block rides an elevator in which a disembodied voice points out the occupants of each level he passes. In a clear dig, critics are consigned to one level, the media to another — the media level, however, is unfortunately full, the voice tells Block. Once he reaches the lowest level, Block meets a man condemned for inventing aluminum siding, but also meets his father, sent there because he never forgave Block because his mother died in childbirth with him. After Block forgives him, he tells the demon holding his father's chain to send him to heaven. "Jews don't believe in heaven," his father says, asking instead to be sent to a Chinese restaurant. Finally finding Larry, Block argues that he, himself, is actually more evil than he, and is, in fact, the worst man ever born. "What about Hitler?" Larry asks. "Okay," Block concedes," Hitler, Goering, Goebbels. But I'm fourth behind them."
At the same time the fantasy sequences are funny, Block's real-life confrontations are sad, largely because it also becomes clear that, while Block complains about his loneliness, it's a hell he's built for himself because he's spent his life using the people who were close to him, for his fiction, yes, savaging his wives, his parents, his sister, his Jewish heritage, but he's also been cynical about whatever affection they may have had for him. Throughout his relationship with Fay, for example, he cautioned her, "Don't fall in love with me." Worse, Block blames everyone else for his problems and eventual loneliness; in a disturbing yet wonderful scene, his second wife, a psychiatrist, learns that Block has been having an affair with one of her patients. When she confronts him, he tells her that it's her fault — she's been distant since their child was born, she's been wrapped up in her practice, and because he works in the home and she sees her clients there, it was the only place he could have met a mistress.
Perhaps the most striking scene, however, is a flashback in which Lucy visits her sister, Jane (Amy Irving), who tells her that Block has left her for another woman. Initially, Lucy is certain she is the other woman, and Davis' performance here is remarkable, first as Lucy attempts to conceal her joy that Block and she will be together and then when she struggles futilely to conceal her devastation when she learns Block has left Jane for someone else altogether. Throughout his career as a director, Allen has coaxed outstanding performances from his actresses (witness four Oscars for women in his films); as it was in Husbands and Wives, Davis' performance here, albeit in a smaller role, is nothing short of extraordinary.
Allen has been making darkly funny films for the last decade, beginning primarily with Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989. Even last year's bittersweet anti-musical, Everyone Says I Love You was in many ways an unhappy film — how many romantic musicals, after all, end with the boy not getting the girl? If you can go into the theater remembering that this "new" darker Woody Allen has been making movies for much longer than the "old, wacky" Woody Allen (who really hasn't been with us in almost a quarter century); if you go into the theater open to the notion that Deconstructing Harry is not the autobiography of a persecuted artist, but a complex portrait of an unhappy man, then you could find yourself coming out thinking that the movie is one of the most remarkable you've seen in a long while.
by Joe Schuster
Back to the list of reviews.
Back to Joe Schuster's Home Page