Deconstructing Harry (1997)

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Movies
April 21st, 2003 • 5:29 am

Woody Allen’s movie making can be downright infuriating at times, and this movie is no exception. But in the end you’ve got to admire the… construction of the movie itself. There is no denying the cleverness of it — and the fact that most annoyances are probably quite deliberate. Too clever? I don’t know if there is such a thing as art that’s too clever. For my money, it can never be clever enough.

It is, of course, pretty much impossible to summarize the “plot” — doing so would probably make the movie sound really bad. (And maybe it is.) Suffice to say that there are enough plots within the plots within the plot to keep the mind busy. Does the soul get satisfaction, though? Probably not, but then nothing says mind and soul are really much different from each other in the first place…

Oh well. If you have never liked Woody Allen’s movies, this one is not going make you like them. If you’ve ever collapsed in laughter (last time I did was with the tape-player scene in Manhattan Murder Mystery) then every movie is worth seeing, just in case it happens again. (It won’t happen every time. Too much depends on one’s mood, one’s state of mind. You can’t blame art for all your ups and downs.)


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