Deconstructing Harry

It isn't as lovable as "Annie Hall" or "Hannah and Her Sisters," and it's not as overtly philosophical as "Crimes and Misdemeanors." And that's probably why "Deconstructing Harry" is underrated by film/Allen fans. Still, it ranks among the Top 5 Allen films. Woody plays a Philip Roth-like fiction writer who is lecherous, unlikable, and disloyal; in dropping his "cute loser" shtick, the performance rings with more honesty than he's had in years. In a nod to Bergman's "Wild Strawberries," Allen's character has a chance to reflect on his life as he travels to a university for an honor. Memories mix with scenes this writer's fiction, providing opportunities for the large and excellent ensemble cast. Many of Allen's later films seem tired, but the neurotic jumpiness he brings to "Deconstructing Harry" reinjects energy into his work. If you loved "Husbands and Wives," try this. I rate it 9.

Just as I've found a newfound appreciation for Elvis Costello, I've likewise opened my heart to Woody Allen (my New Year's resolution: be nicer to nerdy art-types). I even saw Deconstructing Harry twice, (after which I read a Woody Allen collection of short pieces and rented both Bananas and Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex). Hey, what can I say – I thought The Purple Rose Of Cairo might've been a fluke, but I guess I'm just a Woody Allen fan now.

Deconstructing Harry is laugh-out-loud funny, tracing the steps of Harry Block, a neurotic, foul-mouthed, Jewish, self-hating, pill-popping, womanizing alcoholic (three wives and six therapists later) that oddly enough, resembles Woody Allen and his own life (give or take a few things). Block has (giggle) writer's block, and can't write about his life. As a result, he becomes `unfocused,' entangling himself in fact and fiction (i.e. he interacts with his own characters). `You expect the world to adjust to the distortion you've become,' Harry's analyst tells him. What follows is a series of skits that interact with the past and present and the real and imagined – it's kind of like watching a Kurt Vonnegut story edited by Quentin Tarentino.

The all-star cast is phenomenal: Robin Williams is hilarious, Kirstie Alley is hysterically funny, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is super-sexy and Elizabeth Shue is as sweet as sugar. Billy Crystal even pulls off a good role as the Devil. But other than the characterization, Woody's new flick is witty, cold-hearted, extremely vulgar, often tasteless and perfectly profane with enough catch-lines to keep film buffs cracking for years (`I always keep a little hooker money around'). Hannah And Her Sisters this ain't!

"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.

Harry Block is a writer who tends to thinly veil his won life in his art. His tendency to mock his friends and family through similar characters in his work has left him with three ex-wives and a huge number of people who hate him. He lives a lonely life and has a penchant for pills and whore (prostitution being pure and totally free of BS). When his college plans to honour him he finds he has no-one who wants to go with him, so he ‘kidnaps' his son, a black whore and an old friend with him. As the characters from his work come and go around him, he finds that he struggles to make amends with those around him and decides than he can only be happy in his work.

This is a fantastic Woody Allen film, and his only film to be rated 18 in the UK. The story seems to be a very clear, very personal attack on himself. It's like Allen is using a fictional story (going to be honoured by his college) to lay himself bare. Certainly Block's habit for using his own life in his work seems to echo accusations towards Allen in real life. At times this makes the film really hard to watch, some scenes are so full of apparent self-loathing and bile that it's hard to laugh. Happily the film is hilarious all the way through - this is not one of Allen's arty, serious films. It should be said that Allen denies that this is as personal as it appears but it is easy to see why it is seen as a personal attack on himself.

The film's main story is littered with scenes from Block's work that demonstrate how he has used his characters to mock others and to portray himself - Robin Williams is the best as the artist that literally lacks focus and Crystal is hellishly good. The story's moral about art and life is not as clear or as clever as it thinks it is, but it's very, very funny and the level of bile Allen appears to be spitting at himself is very interesting to observe.

Allen is great in the central role, but you do occasionally feel like you should look away at times because he appears to be giving himself a real kicking. The rest of the cast is really good and is full of famous faces ranging from big stars (Moore, Crystal, Alley, Williams) to familiar faces (Maguire, Bogosian, Louis-Dreyfus, Shue, Tucci). As a director Allen does some new tricks to make this feel even more different from his other films, but the jump cuts etc are a little tiresome. The most important character to me is Cookie. She is significant because Allen has not really ever created a good black character (even if she is a prostitute).

Overall this is a really funny film. The degree of vitriol that Allen appears to aim towards himself makes this a little less enjoyable but overall it is a great film.

By all means, Deconstructing Harry will divide, and has divided, viewers, people may be put off by the odd cuts, the (deliberately) fragmented story and the crass language(which will be a shock even for Woody Allen fans). Personally though Deconstructing Harry was a great film and among the best of Allen's 90s output and among his best overall as well. True, the pacing is too erratic in places but compared to how truly brilliant everything else that made no difference to me. The film may not be as visually beautiful as, say, Manhattan and Purple Rose of Cairo(but it was never was meant to be, it's not that kind of film), but while the photography may be deemed odd by some with the jump cuts it was really interesting and fitted perfectly with the subject matter. The scenery and such are lovely and authentic as usual. The soundtrack again, as is true of Allen, is very well chosen and catchy and never feels misplaced. The humour and script are very, very crass and scathing which was a shock to me on first viewing and for other people as well seeing as Allen has never been more bitter, but is so cleverly written and hilarious with a tinge of sadness the approach works wonders. Allen has plenty to say here and he doesn't hold anything back and presents it bluntly, it seems that he was having troubles personally(like Stardust Memories where he showed frustration at his critics except that was done much more subtly) at the same and there is that sense here. The story is unusually structured and very ambitious, almost fragmented, but never to the state of incoherence, and there are some really effective and hilarious scenes like the explicit sex scene and the one in hell. The character relationships are beautifully and insightfully done and the characters are written scathingly but not to the point of completely hating them(the mistake that Anything Else did). The acting is great from everyone, Kirstie Alley is cute and funny, Elizabeth Shue is sweet while not being too sugary, Robin Williams is just hilarious and Billy Crystal is devilishly good, pun intended. But Allen is the one who deserves a lot of the credit here, Deconstructing Harry has some of his most unique direction, perhaps a very close second to Zelig, and one of his best performances too. Overall, personal, daring, blistering and hilarious, one of Woody Allen's better films but one of his most divisive and (to me and quite a lot of other fans) under-valued. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox