1997’s “Deconstructing Harry” is Woody Allen’s last great love song to New York. It is also one of the most bold and daring narrative structures that he has ever attempted as a director.
Harry Block (Allen) is a wonderful writer with a hellish personal life, which is exacerbated by a harsh period of self reflection.
While this is not an amazingly original concept, Allen handles it with a unique narrative. We glimpse into Block’s life and are shown brief vignettes that are seemingly unconnected. Yet, we discover as the story progresses that the vignettes are actual stories he has written that reflect the troubles in his life.
The fourth wall is broken when these fictional characters subconsciously give real-life advice to the main character. It is initially revealed that these characters know more about his life than he does, but the audience understands that Block is simply trying to delude himself about what a jerk he is. (Freud would have a field day with him.)
To make matters worse, Block’s books are based on his best friends and family that now resent him, causing him to be a lonely man.
This results in a car ride to a college that is honoring him, with his kidnapped son, a hooker and a man with a heart condition, who is marvelously played by Bob Balaban (“Absence of Malice”).
The fictional stories interlope with the reality of Block and the film is one amazing experience guided by wonderful cinematography of the New York streets. What makes the vignettes so wonderful is that Allen is able to assemble an amazing cast of actors for five to 10 minutes of screen time.
Standouts include Robin Williams as an out-of-focus actor (literally), Demi Moore as a born-again Jew, Billy Crystal as the devil (his character is real and fictional throughout) and Richard Benjamin (“Westworld”) as a taller and more charismatic version of Block. Then you have the other amazing cast assembled to play the real-life characters of his ex-girlfriends and -wives, which include Kirstie Alley, Elizabeth Shue (“The Karate Kid”) and Amy Irving (“Adam”).
However, a notable exception needs to be made for Judy Davis (“A Passage to India”) as Lucy. Block literally ruined this poor woman’s life and that is evident in an early vignette where she is played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Lucy is scorned for revenge and Davis plays her with such a lunatic conviction that you can’t help but admire her acting abilities.
“Deconstructing Harry” manages to provide us with a loathsome yet endearing main character that we can’t help but watch. It is also a reminder that Allen often takes simple subject matters and weaves them into something that is completely his own.
It might have been hard to catch this movie back in 1997 due to the cosmic success of “Titanic,†but the Academy Awards noticed and nominated it for Best Original Screenplay.
Very seldom does an all-star cast appear in a film that actually comes together excellently, and “Deconstructing Harry” will always be a prime example of that.
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