Deconstructing Harry

Woody Allen is well-known to mine his own life experience for his films and part of their ongoing appeal is the question of where does the real life Allen Konigsberg/Woody Allen end and his recurring alter egos begin. With Deconstructing Harry he moves this question up a level by playing a writer, Harry Block, who parasitically uses his own life experience for his novels.

Despite the philosophically trendy title this is not a thorough-going piece of self-analysis, and the film remains very much a comedy in Allen’s now-familiar style. Harry Block is a guy who is successful as an artist but a failure as a husband. Given that Allen plays the lead it is rather difficult to accept his Block as a pill-popping womanizer with a string of lovers. The schlemiel keeps poking through and makes, in particular, his relationship with the beautiful Fay (Elizabeth Shue), the inevitable much younger woman with whom Allen sets himself up, the least credible component of the film.

The plethora of characters, some “real” parts of Harry’s life and some their fictional transpositions, makes the film jump around like a firecracker but the energy is engaging. Judy Davis and Kirstie Alley are particularly good as women short-changed by Harry’s sexual compulsion and if there is nothing especially new about the film it is one of Allen’s more inventive variations on his familiar preoccupations. Depending on your feelings about the latter that will, or will not, be a good thing.

 

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