XPost: rec.arts.movies.past-films   
   From: jhXaYrknessZ@sympatico.ca   
      
   Deconstructing Harry isn't a Woody movie about Woody.   
      
   It's a Woody movie about Philip Roth, who started dating Mia after he   
   divorced Claire Bloom.   
      
   Just something to think about.   
      
   John Harkness   
      
      
      
   On 10 Jan 2004 12:58:51 -0800, lisamorgendunst2@hotmail.com   
   (RattleRain) wrote:   
      
   >Allen's films are nothing without neurotic--even pathological--verbal   
   >handwringing but has generally avoided obscenities. Allen has often   
   >said he loves jazz but loathes the barbarism of rock.   
   >So, watch any Allen movie and you almost never hear the f-word. Too   
   >neanderthal.   
   >   
   >Yet, there are exceptions. Husbands and Wives, one of Allen's nastiest   
   >and unpleasant films, and perhaps the only one in which Allen is   
   >completely a noncomic character. Morose, sour, and disgruntled. Didn't   
   >like it.   
   >   
   >Deconsructing Harry, which I finally came around to seeing, borrows   
   >some of the nastiness of Husbands and Wives. It has more f-word than   
   >all the other Allen films combined. Here, Allen often uses words like   
   >'cunt' and worse.   
   >What's going on? Was Allen trying to be hip, that he's no square? Or,   
   >was he simply being realistic, that people really do talk this   
   >way--including himself in private; then why not in most of his   
   >previous films? Or, to show the stupidity of relying on filth as   
   >self-expression(that those who are most frontal are often those are   
   >most vulnerable)? Or, was it meant to be a kind of dumb Freudianism   
   >that everyone really only has 'fucking' on his or her mind?   
   >   
   >Deconstructing Harry borrows much from Stardust Memories which   
   >borrowed from 8 1/2. It's about the relation between the artist and   
   >his creation. It also fits in ratherly snugly with all the recent   
   >movies about the porous barrier between life and art, reality and   
   >fantasy(Mulholland Drive, Adaptation, Fight Club, countless others).   
   >   
   >Allen is making fun of the academic trend that has taken over   
   >universities; how art is often reduced to(and exposed for) its hidden   
   >ideological or personal contents. Yet, judging by this movie, Allen   
   >seems to agree that art is nothing but a specious rearranging of   
   >reality. Or, perhaps Allen was demonstrating what art and the artist   
   >becomes if we apply deconstructionism as the only tool of analysis and   
   >appreciation. Whatever, Allen has a sense of humor that saves his film   
   >from drab intellectualism. Also, we see Harry coming to terms with all   
   >his creations at the end(a scene reminiscent of All That Jazz which   
   >was also inspired by 8 1/2). So, Allen seems to saying despite the   
   >bullshit, we have embrace art and life for what it is, and that no one   
   >is above deconstruction. In one scene, a psychiatrist, nomimally a   
   >person of science and rationality, becomes as hysterical and ludicrous   
   >as any schizo; analyst in no less in need of help than the patient, a   
   >needy message for all the preening and judgmental academic mavins in   
   >all the English Departments across the country.   
   >   
   >   
   >One thing in the movie made me wonder about Allen's preference for   
   >shikses. In the popular imagination, Jewish men favor shikses because   
   >they are prettier than Jewish women. Having grown up in Skokie I can   
   >vouch that Jewish babedom is not in short supply.  The stereotypical   
   >image of Jewish woman as Groucho Marxes with long hair is mostly a   
   >popular myth, like Sambo and Fu Man Chu, though not entirely   
   >unfounded(just as though most Jewish men are not Woody Allenish, his   
   >kind does exist).   
   >Anyway, in one scene Harry meets his estranged sister and they really   
   >duke it out on Jewish issues, and this woman goes toe to toe with   
   >Harry(Allen); wit for wit, word for word, she can trade blows with   
   >anyone.   
   >Now compare her with the fantasy or preferred shikses in Allen's   
   >films. Keaton is almost always a featherbrained pushover. Farrow is   
   >cute and darling.  Hershey has rosy apple cheeks and dainty, even   
   >submissive, quality about her. And, Mariel Hemingway is innocent,   
   >pure, and fairylike; also a child, a perfect metaphor for all of   
   >Allen's shikse fantasies. Allen is kinda like a spiritual pedophile   
   >when it comes to the opposite sex.   
   >In most Allen movies we often see Allen initially involved with an   
   >overly neurotic, aggressive, intellectual, and/or Jewish woman but   
   >then veers off to a relationship with shikse woman who may have   
   >intellectual pretensions but whose real charm lies in her womanliness,   
   >her earthgoddessness, her maternalness,  cutesiness, witlessness, etc.   
   >It even goes as far back to Take the Money and Run. And, who did Allen   
   >finally marry? Dimwit Soon Yi Previn.   
   >   
   >This is somewhat unfortunate(only 'somewhat' because Keaton and Farrow   
   >have done some of their finest work in Allen movies)because that scene   
   >between Harry and his sister has comic tension and energy so often   
   >lacking in Allen/shikse situations. Against the sister character,   
   >Allen can't just spout off his neurosis, half-profundities, and   
   >whatnot. He's really challenged, confronted with a smart woman who   
   >can't simply be written as PMS bitch or neurotic intellectual or naive   
   >emotional waif.   
   >   
   >Another great scene in Deconstructing Harry takes place in hell and   
   >easily ranks among Allen's funniest comic inventions. And one of the   
   >most daring. Allen confronts the lord of hell, his archnemesis, a   
   >fellow Jewish writer bestowed with such sinister pedigree for having   
   >'stolen' Harry's shikse girlfriend. So we have two middle aged Jewish   
   >guys in hell fighting over a young blonde wasp woman. But, their   
   >hostility soon melts into mutual recogntion and respect as they share   
   >their accounts of sexual misdeeds and conquests.  It's a scene done as   
   >elegantly as any cocktail scene in any old Hollywood movie, but the   
   >underlying scenario is the zaniest(and the most macarbe) thing Allen   
   >has come up with since the sperm scene in Everything You Wanted to   
   >Know about Sex where some black guy dazedly mutters,  "What am I doing   
   >here?"   
   >   
   >In the movie, Harry is to be honored for his accomplishments as a   
   >writer at a university(perhaps inspired by Wild Strawberries). I guess   
   >the irony is modern academia is in a weird position of both   
   >strip/whipping artists as well as  honoring them.   
   >   
   >Perhaps, what Allen is saying is just as Harry's books are often   
   >fraudulent and vengeful, and the truth really lies between the lines,   
   >Allen's movies are also the products of Allen's ego on the rampage,   
   >often sacrificing fairness and truthfulness. Yet, Deconsructing Harry   
   >also seems to be slyly justifying Allen's past behavior. For example,   
   >Allen in real life was accused of child molestation. In Deconstructing   
   >Harry, a woman(Mariel Hemingway)is shocked to overhear Harry candidly   
   >discussing penises and women with his son. Is Allen sneakily saying   
   >that this was all that transpired between him and son in real life?   
      
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