There’s a line very early in this that sums up what makes a film like Harry and Tonto beautiful. It’s said by a character who doesn’t have a name beyond Old Landlady and someone who pays very little relevance to the film, but the quote she says is so profound that it sticks with you:
“At our age, if you don't know what the world looks like, you never will.”
This is exactly what makes Harry and Tonto great. It is a man, a man in his early seventies, deciding he needs to see America with his little orange cat; only the nation of America, with its landscapes of desert and snow and the woods, can provide such a backdrop for a great story like this. My little orange cat - well, he’s a bit of a big orange cat - even sat there and kept me company. Much like Harry, I too would do anything to ensure he was comfortable for the journey.
Along the way on his journey Art Carney’s Harry meets people, the various people that build America as we once could see it. He sees the past and the future and makes friends everywhere he goes. He meets people who are cheerful, people who are crude, people who dream. It’s all episodic, and yet it all pieces together in this wonderful film that challenges the main character in a world familiar and yet unfamiliar all at once. It’s like the Straight Story, and yet so mundane all while Art Carney puts on a performance that feels as weathered as Richard Farnsworth’s all while being twenty years younger. To see him approach his first love, a woman who lives in a nursing home and thinks he is her late husband because she no longer remembers is heartbreaking, and Carney sells it so well. Here comes another line, a piece of dialogue between Harry and his daughter:
*“You know, the strangest thing about being old is... all your friends are dead.”
“Well, all your old friends, maybe. You could make new friends, you know?”*
The road to the next chapter never ends, even when the story does. That sounds oxymoronic, but in a way that strikes true to me.
This film is idyllic, and quite possibly Mazursky’s masterpiece. I quite loved it. Absolutely deserved Oscar for Carney, up there as an underrated film in the American landscape.
“I know, life is confusing. We're just trying to get on with it, that's all.”
There’s a line very early in this that sums up what makes a film like Harry and Tonto beautiful. It’s said by a character who doesn’t have a name beyond Old Landlady and someone who pays very little relevance to the film, but the quote she says is so profound that it sticks with you:
“At our age, if you don't know what the world looks like, you never will.”
This is exactly what makes Harry and Tonto great. It is a man, a man in his early seventies, deciding he needs to see America with his little orange cat; only the nation of America, with its landscapes of desert and snow and the woods, can provide such a backdrop for a great story like this. My little orange cat - well, he’s a bit of a big orange cat - even sat there and kept me company. Much like Harry, I too would do anything to ensure he was comfortable for the journey.
Along the way on his journey Art Carney’s Harry meets people, the various people that build America as we once could see it. He sees the past and the future and makes friends everywhere he goes. He meets people who are cheerful, people who are crude, people who dream. It’s all episodic, and yet it all pieces together in this wonderful film that challenges the main character in a world familiar and yet unfamiliar all at once. It’s like the Straight Story, and yet so mundane all while Art Carney puts on a performance that feels as weathered as Richard Farnsworth’s all while being twenty years younger. To see him approach his first love, a woman who lives in a nursing home and thinks he is her late husband because she no longer remembers is heartbreaking, and Carney sells it so well. Here comes another line, a piece of dialogue between Harry and his daughter:
*“You know, the strangest thing about being old is... all your friends are dead.”
“Well, all your old friends, maybe. You could make new friends, you know?”*
The road to the next chapter never ends, even when the story does. That sounds oxymoronic, but in a way that strikes true to me.
This film is idyllic, and quite possibly Mazursky’s masterpiece. I quite loved it. Absolutely deserved Oscar for Carney, up there as an underrated film in the American landscape.
“I know, life is confusing. We're just trying to get on with it, that's all.”
