# Deconstructing Harry (1997)

### reviewed by
Omar Odeh

Good news: Woody Allen's back. Despite an embarassingly humble release pattern, here in the capital, Allen's new film Deconstructing Harry is one of the best of the year. It chronicles life history, more or less, of a New York novelist of jewish origin. This description is unfairly simple, however, since ultimately this loose story serves only as a premise for Allen to launch a savage social critique, backed by deft casting and narrative technique. The film has been characterised as everything from 'irresponsibly sexist' to 'embarassingly revealing'. This is perhaps hardly surprising in view of the technocratic lynching Allen received in the media several years ago. Ironically, many of these reviewers are in fact indulging the very vices that Allen critiques through his protagonist. It is to his credt that despite this he has managed to pull off a film as inspired as this. (Ottawa dwellers be advised of the upcoming screening of Manhattan at the Bytowne.)

Allen takes no prisonners as he lampoons every facet of conventional life and those naive, bored or lazy enough to still practice it. The jewish faith, and by extension, institutionalized religion, is treated with characetristic duality (Love and Death), sexuality is twisted into an eerie grotesque (Manhattan) and Allem's wit is razour sharp. Not the gimmicks and tricks that littered Mighty Aphrodite or Everyone says I Love You. The film is exemplary of the bizarre experiences Allen's best films put us through: to laugh while recognizing how pathetic the goings-on are. And no-one is more pathetic here than Allen's protagonist. A man so incapbable of spending time in the real world, he has been left no alternative but to create his own.

The film benefits from truly inspired casting. The film is structured such that for most of the people present in Harry's real life there is another set of actors that play the fictional recreations of these people as present in Harry's books. The pairings could be the subject of a review in and of themselves. Examples of people/character pairings include: Kristie Alley/Demi Moore and Judy Davis/Julia Louis Dreyfus. The considerations that emerge from these pairings are two-fold, exploring both the unreliability of perception and by extension the artistic process as well as alluding to the fallacy and duplicity inherent in the star system. (Perhaps that last one is my own zeal getting the better of me) Nonetheless Allen seems to have payed careful attention to every casting decision. Even Robin Williams apearrance as an actor in one of Harry's fictional stories, although it lasts only several minutes, is elevated to a level above that of a simple cameo. A lesser filmmaker would have treated the appearance in a purly cursory manner, Allen instead seems to be suggesting that the casting is to be scrutinized in detail.

One of the most notable aspects of the film, is its narrative construction. Deconstructing Harry is narrated with a flashback structure that consists of three planes. The first is Harry's present day life with all of its dilemmas and complications, the second is the fictional world of Harry's books, and the last is Harry's true past that is dealt with on occasion to contrast with the fictional world that we are presented with. Which of these is which is only made clear as the film progresses. The associations that emerge as a result of the interacting of these three planes are a primary source of meaning generation in the film. It is only as the fictitious and the non-fictitious is delineated that the relevance of certain scenes becomes clear. Harry turning 'soft' is an amusing gimmick on it's own, however, situated as it is after the actor-story and late in the film it is an eleagant device reaffirming the inescapable fate of the protagonist: to forever be confounded by the very fiction he seeks therapy with.

On this basis, an attractive reading of the film-although it is impossible to confirm or refute it- is as an allegory for the current state of Americain independant filmmaking. As filmmaker after filmmaker lines up with their low budget, flawed assumptions and 'genuine story', there are eerie parallels to be drawn with the flawed ethic displayed by Allen's protagonist.

    -Omar Odeh
    http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/3920

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