Review of Deconstructing Harry (1997) by Chris W — 02 Dec 2012

This quickly became one of my favorite films by Woody Allen that I've seen so far (and at this point I've seen 26 of them). It's fragmented with purpose. The editing style really blew me away.

In the middle of a sentence there could be a jump cut and you're in a whole new part of the conversation. He does plenty of things to have the audience participate in the film as Harry Block. Harry's not a great character to be, which might be why some people are so uncomfortable with this film.

Harry writes his life into stories that are either completely fantastical or follow the line of magical realism. Completely fantastical would be the scene where he goes down to Hell to retrieve the woman he loves, then meets Billy Crystal down there, who's actually Satan.

Magical realism would be the segment where Robin Williams finds himself to be out of focus. All of this serves the purpose so that we can understand the life of Harry. It opens with an angry woman going to an apartment, and it keeps going back and showing different jump cuts throughout the credits.

It's really interesting because I don't believe he's done jump cuts like this before, so to show he's going all out in being different he also puts it in the middle of his opening credits, which are usually the golden age of Hollywood style of credits in the front of the film.

On top of this there's more cursing here than any other Woody Allen film I have seen. It's truly darker than most of his films. There's a scene where he kidnaps his own son, drives up to a ceremony where they give him an award with a hooker, and his friend dies in the back seat.

They arrive at the place with his dead friend still in the back seat. It's a pretty strange scene to laugh at since his kid's probably about 10 years old and dealing with death on this level. There's also a scene where Harry's in school teaching his son about why their penises look different.

Harry's the kind of guy who likes hookers, loves sex, but doesn't want a real relationship. What's the point? So two people can become like brother and sister? No, no, no. That's not what he wants.

Love's out of the question, or so he thought before he realized he was in love with Fay, but he told her never to fall in love with him so she ends up marrying Billy Crystal's character. When the women in his life come back they yell at him about the stories he wrote.

How one of the women he slept with was his wife's sister and they had sex at a family outing. Well his ex-wife never found out until the book came out. Harry keeps telling people his books are lightly inspired by his own life, but when you look at it there are only minute differences that don't even matter.

One of the stories is about him having sex with a hooker for the first time, then afterwords death knocks on his door calling for the person who lives at the place, which isn't actually him, but that doesn't really matter.

On top of all of this, Deconstructing Harry also has one of the best cast list for a Woody Allen film. He tends to cast well, but this one was just incredible: Robin Williams, Elizabeth Shue, Bob Balaban, Eric Bogosian, Paul Giammati, Billy Crystal, Kirstie Alley, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Tobey Maguire, Julia-Louise Dreyfus, and Joan Allen.

It's ridiculous. And the whole point is to connect with this messed up character who needs to discover how to get his life to work on some level. He has had writers block since Fay left him, so there's obviously going to be the scene of realization that inspires him to write again.

Deconstructing Harry is a truly great film by Woody Allen that shows off his talent as a completely unique narrative filmmaker.