Film Review
Deconstructing Harry is Woody Allen's approximate self-portrait of
the artist as a complete shyster, with an uncontrollable libido and a sewer-mouth
to match. Although somewhat less flamboyant, it is essentially a remake
of the writer-director's earlier
Stardust Memories (1980)
and makes little attempt to conceal its influences in European art house
cinema - principally Ingmar Bergman's
Wild Strawberries (1957)
and Federico Fellini's
8½
(1963). Like the life of the central character it depicts and which
Allen plays so brilliantly (presumably because it is the closest he has got
to playing his true self on screen), this patchwork quilt of a film is a
complete mess that positively revels in self-pity and self-loathing of the
most sickening kind. In the end it only just manages to come together
as a grudgingly coherent statement of an artist's torment, but by this stage
the spectator is unlikely to have much sympathy left for the self-destructive
and grotesquely cynical protagonist, who, not content with poisoning his
own life, cannot help wrecking those of the people closest to him in real
life.
Allen has never created such an unsympathetic character and it's revealing
that he should cast himself in the role of such an odious and carelessly
destructive individual as Harry Block. The film's depiction of a writer
struggling with the severest case of writer's block is so bitterly authentic
that you are left in no doubt that this is a condition the author is all
too familiar with (although his superhuman productivity would tend to belie
this). Allen has probably never written or played a character as close
to himself as he does here, and this is why, for all its faults (the constant
stream of expletives and endless jump-cutting will strain your patience to
breaking point), the film can hardly fail to hold your attention.
Amidst all the off-putting smut-encrusted crudity and frenetic silliness
there some inspired comic moments along the way (the high point being Robin
Williams as an actor who - to his horror - finds he is permanently out of
focus), but essentially it is Allen's willingness to bare his soul and give
us a privileged (albeit somewhat warped) insight into the man behind the
carefully manufactured persona that makes
Deconstructing Harry such
an interesting work of dark introspection. When an artist has finally
attained a level of confidence (or desperation) to start disassembling his own life and art
in an attempt to make sense of them, that's when he is truly justified in
calling himself an artist.
© James Travers 2017
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Harry Block is a writer in crisis. Afflicted with a severe case of
writer's block, he is struggling to come up with an original idea for his
next novel. And if that wasn't enough to drive him to the therapist's
couch his ex-wives, family and friends are now railing against him for having
the audacity and bad taste to use the most intimate details of their personal
lives as material in his writing. Harry is poised on the brink of a
complete nervous breakdown and as his life falls apart his fictional creations
return to him to console and taunt him, whilst their real-life counterparts
become increasingly fractious and threatening. Things come to a head
when Harry abducts his own son whilst driving to his old university to receive
an award, accompanied by a man with a heart condition and a sympathetic prostitute.
His descent into Hell is now firmly assured...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.