Singing The Blues

PAUL NEWMAN'S FIRST FORAY into directing. Harry and Son, presents a series of excruciatingly mangled human relationships. At times touching, at times insightful, and generally well put together, the movie is rather like watching a show of hyper-realist depictions of dirty laundry, done from all angles. It is difficult to say whether Newman intended the movie to be as jarring as it is or whether some of its irony and brutality is merely "romance" that simply did not come off.

The protagonist. Harry, is a construction crane operator who gets ill and consequently, tired. A man who had always been proud of his self-sufficiency and skill on the job, he does not make the descent into economic obsolescence gracefully. Faced with the ignominy of pleading for jobs at a string of recession-time construction sites, he is left with no alternatives but to work as a night-watchman, or to accept a job with his brother, a small-time merchant, benevolent and argyle-sweatered, still hoping that there are fortunes to be made in "surplus" Harry cannot resign himself to either task, particularly since he, and the audience, have little doubt that he is facing his last months.

Paul Newman's acting surpasses his directing Excruciatingly convincing as Harry, he portrays suffering with understatement rendering the character sympathetic as well as believable.

A widower, Harry has no-one to count on but a teenage son. The Son (Robby Benson) spends his time surfing, reclining in a Jacuzzi, and thinking of himself as Hemingway--the latter possibly accounts for a vocabulary that makes Spring Break seem eloquent. While the story centers on the deep affection between father and son, the communication gap between the two is so wide as to make the actual emotions not only a source of confusion for the characters themselves, but also a mystery to the viewers. While neither Harry nor the audience doubt that he is a dying man, the Son seems oblivious to any trouble at all. A valedictorian two years ago, he is unable to keep a full-time job of any sort--in an attempt at the assembly line, he sabotages the whole plant, and chuckles smugly at his dismissal. A go at car theft proves him equally "temperamentally unsuited" for that profession. So, he resigns himself to a life of surferdom. To prove he is not a mere child, Benson decides to marry an ex-girlfriend who is pregnant with someone else's child.

When Harry is, once again, upset at his son's failure to take responsibility, the kid closes him in a bear hug, assuring his father that there is absolutely nothing wrong. "We have a nifty house...we'll do just fine, an asshole and a sonofabitch." He then leaves Harry to trot back to the beach, as the camera zooms to the face of his father, blank with shock and rage. He then proceeds to kick out his offspring in the hope that "...he'll see the light when he feels the heat." The expectation seems futile, for the son's grief at the end appears just as self-indulgent and uncomprehending as does his affection and manic cheer throughout the rest of the film.

THE WORLD PORTRAYED in the movie is generally depressing as things tend to move from bad to worse for all the characters. The only success story we come across is that of a crippled black man who makes it as a car thief. The minor characters--Benson's spacy yet sympathetic bride, her phrenologist-pet merchant mother, and Harry's brother--are well-portrayed, each contributing convincingly to the tapestry of Middle America fallen on hard times. Scenery of construction sites, factories and dreary Florida suburbs add to the general air of hopelessness.

The movie's ending is heavy on tearful cloth-rending--everyone sees Harry as a sentimental memory that will be "nice to think back to," in the words of one woman. The poignancy of the whole story rests in just that--hindsight is no clearer than the perceptions shown the first time around, nothing has been learned, and nothing, it seems, ever will be.

Whether Newman meant the facile sentiment of the ending to be taken at face value remains unclear. There are some unconvincing maudlin touches towards the end of the story--the son sells a story titled "Harry"; and Harry has a tender romance with a zany phrenologist.

The over-all negativity, however, prevails. Whether attempts to make the film a little less depressing, or intentional ironies, even the "cheery" touches contribute to the movie's bitter aftertaste. Perturbing rather than entertaining. Harry and Son is a skillful tribute to life and to America at its ugliest.