Deconstructing Harry (1997)
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Deconstructing Harry Movie Review
Deconstructing Harry is a 1997 black comedy film directed by and starring Woody Allen. It is one of his better and funniest movies.
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“I’m a guy who can’t function well in life but can in art“
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The movie features Harry, an author suffering from writer’s block. His life turns miserable, when characters both real and fictional, from his best-selling books start to haunt him. The film features a bit of a chaotic structure, which mostly worked for it as it helped us get to know the main character better and how lost he is in life, but I still wanted a more polished approach. More fantastical elements would have done wonders for it.
But those that we got are still outstanding. There is this incredible sequence in Hell with Billy Crystal playing the Devil himself. Allen and Crystal share such hilarious banter that would undoubtedly get them and the whole movie cancelled today for being “sexist”. Another standout scene is the one where Robin Williams is out of focus and we see that he is literally blurry in his appearance. That bit was extraordinarily original as I have never seen anything quite like it.
Kirstie Alley also impresses as Harry Block’s second wife. She is hysterical and those loud arguments that the two have are very entertaining. The film turns into a road trip movie very late in the game, and although I wished that this sequence was longer, it was so funny and perfectly constructed nonetheless. Harry goes to this special ceremony where they will honor him at his school and he brings his friend who dies on the way there, a hooker carrying drugs and a kidnapped son. Needless to say, the resulting situations were hysterical.
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A lot has been said about Woody Allen, but there is one thing that nobody can deny the guy and that is honesty and deep self-awareness that run through his every pore. Harry is the embodiment of Allen and the story is probably his most autobiographical and personal to date. Thus, we get a revealing look into the many layers of his personal life through these very cruel, but funny lenses.
He basically admits that he is a lying creep who chases “whores” and who is constantly neurotic and drugged up on pills. Now, we will never know just how personal this depiction is, but I would argue that it’s mostly very personal as this is what we’ve heard from the stories about Allen in the media. Whatever the case, he remains a phenomenal director and a gifted comedian and this is a film that just goes to show the sorry state of comedies these days when you realize that this type of film would never be released today as it’s far from politically correct and I loved it for that.
There is also a strong streak of self-hating Jew stereotype jokes that plagues his every film and those moments were among the funniest. The dialogue is tremendous throughout as there are so many instantly quotable, hilarious zingers throughout the story that remains fun and briskly paced from start to finish.
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The editing is quite advanced as the film’s structure, no matter how chaotic, is elevated by strong editing techniques, the most admirable choice being to cut each and every dialogue to the most important spoken points, thus making it streamlined and more immediate in its effect. Technically, Deconstructing Harry is superb across the board. It took me a while to get accustomed to its craziness, but once I did, I was having an absolute blast watching it.
