MovieChat Forums > Handsome Harry (2010) Discussion > Keep repeating: Harry

Keep repeating: Harry

posted 14 years ago by lor_
2 replies | jump to latest

I found it annoying that the characters in the film constantly said "Harry" in practically every sentence addressing the title character Jamey Sheridan was playing. It would have made sense if upon meeting him someone would remark, "Why it's good ole Handsome Harry?" or the like, but it became all-to-obvious that this extraneous word was present in the most ordinary and trivial of phrases throughout. In some films the roles are not spelled out clearly enough, but in this one we got his name immediately, without the need for such dumb reinforcement.

Bette Gordon is a film prof at Columbia and has made previous films, so I'm wondering why this rookie mistake survived not only script rewrites, rehearsals and take after take but made its way into the finished film. Usually it's the word *beep* in movies, especially since De Palma's Scarface, that is overused to make a point of being "streetwise" and highly colloquial, but when you watch this film you will see, especially in the second half as the overuse becomes more evident, that individual lines would play just as well without the name being tacked-on, front or back. It had the same effect on me that the current use of "like" at least once or twice in every sentence uttered by so many teens & twenty-somethings has.

"Three quarters of what is said here can be completely discounted as the raving of imbeciles" - Donald Wolfit in Blood of the Vampire (1958)

[–] OakWriter 13 years ago

I didn't notice that at all. I was too distracted by how good the film was and how believable the interactions between characters were.

To address your point more directly, I really think that a curse word either IS colloquial and flows naturally off the tongue, or it just seemed forced. Two different directors could direct films with the same number of fu&*s and one might seem perfectly realistic while the other sounds irritating and offensive. There is precision involved and sometimes less is more but not always in my opinion.

Harry's character is pensive and often aloof. Hence the flashbacks in the film. He only lives part of his life in the present and the rest in the past. Future unknown. I think repeating his name in sentences is a way that some of other characters get his attention, snap him out of his trance.

[–] jigalini 12 years ago

A lot was wrong with the movie, that was least of it's problems, but added to them.