Focus: WoodyAllen

by: Steve Loring

WOODY ALLEN'S LATEST IS AN EXTREME EXAMPLE
OF SELF-REVELATION...

When Woody Allen isn't bemoaning his fate as tabloid journalism's bad- poster-boy of the nineties, he stays busy, year after year, writing and directing some of the most intelligent American comedies of the last two decades. Some of them aren't very good ("Alice," "Shadows and Fog"); and some were quite decent (think "Manhattan Murder Mystery"). Most were outstanding, however, (Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Husbands and Wives," "Bullets Over Broadway"). His latest, "Deconstructing Harry," falls into the latter group. It also represents a marked departure from his usual self characterization in that it addresses the effects his character is having on those around him.

The typical "Woody" protagonist is usually seen as a resultant of his nefarious surroundings. He is neurotic because everything around him has made him so. With "Harry," Allen, for the first time, explores the effects his character's neuroses have on those around him. He does this with glib, lashing humor and a surprising amount of anger.

Harry Block, the main character, is a mess. He is an extremely successful writer but a failure in all other aspects of his life. He drinks, drugs, whores and makes emotional shambles of the lives of anyone close to him by writing "thinly disguised" real life stories featuring characters based on them. An ex-girlfriend tells him his writing area is "the place where you take everybody's suffering and turn it into gold."

Allen seems to be using the Block character to answer some of his real life critics. When asked about his predilection for young women, Block tells his shrink, "When I first meet a women, I immediately wonder what it would be like to fuck her." He later tells his ex-wife, "Do you think getting fellatio from a big breasted twenty six year old is something that is pleasurable for me? Well, it's not."

While such abrasive sarcasm is not exactly absent from usual Allen fare, the tone here is certainly more angry and focused. The punch lines come with targets this time and Allen rarely misses his mark. Tackling his own alleged real life anti-Semitism, his character quickly retorts, as if to a thousand real life critics, "Hey, I may hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish."

The extent to which we can accurately say Harry is Woody is, of course, impossible to determine. However, what seems like certain proof comes late in the film, when his character is talking about his latest short story. Harry Block says to an adoring fan: "I'm tired of saying it's loosely based on me. It's me."