Woody Allen (at the shrink)

Taken from the film Deconstructing Harry - 1997 - Deconstructing Harry is a brilliant film, and it is Allen reaching farther to do more than usual. It is, however, a slightly unpleasant and shocking film. It's hard to see Allen as a dirty old man, using words that would make sailors blush, kissing Elizabeth Shue, slurring drunkenly, and just sad. This time Allen's character is hard to sympathize with. Allen is a very funny actor, but it takes an actor with real skill to touch the audience with such a sad character, like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, (a film which surely inspired Allen) or Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking. To clarify, I still consider Deconstructing Harry a good Allen film. In fact, it's one of my favourite Allen works; but, I also consider it a last throw of the dice for the self-deprecating comedian before a move into new territory—new territory which, quite frankly, is substantially inferior to the old. My belated point being: Allen is at his best when writing and directing about himself. Woody Allen is what makes a Woody Allen film. In Deconstructing Harry, Allen takes this notion to the extreme. Grabbing from his lurid personal life, his film career, and the criticisms most-oft laid on him by his critics, the film melds these elements of reality into a fictional, episodic, fulfilling narrative about a writer who, appropriately enough, likes to take his lurid personal life and turn it into books. This, in the meantime, has destroyed his relationships and left him lonely and living only for his work. Woody is playing Woody, in other words, and tells you as much. For, as the film's Allen alter-ego writer declares at the end of the film, there comes a time when thinly-veiling the truth no longer serves a purpose; it's time to bare all, and openly. In the case of Deconstructing Harry, the truth is that Allen still enjoys his art, even if only his characters still enjoy him

YouTube | November 30, 2007

Tags:. .actor. .allen. .allens. .alterego. .appropriately