David Duneman
Expository Writing
Joe Serio
4/28/13
Elwood Be Down
I did not know what to expect from Harvey when I started
watching it but it turned out to be a very entertaining movie. This movie
revolves around Jimmy Stewarts’ performance of Elwood P. Dowd. I believe his
statement to the mailman, “Every day is a beautiful day”, is a phrase that
pretty much describes Mr. Dowd’s personality. There is nothing not to like
about Elwood P. Dowd; he is social, he is as optimistic as one can be, he is
charming with women, he is very nonchalant, and most importantly he is real. It
seems that Dowd is not all there and not really fully paying attention, but yet
he is almost always doing the right thing. And Stewarts pulls off all these
traits perfectly. It seems to be that the audience is almost the only people
that enjoy his presence. I think the whole moral of Harvey is that life will be
just fine if you believe it will be just like Elwood Dowd believes. We first
learn this when the mental institution takes in his sister Veta in as a crazy
person instead of Dowd himself. This scene was probably one of my favorites
because Elwood is trying to tell the doctors of his giant rabbit friend the
entire time but they keep interrupting him with questions and concerns. This is
like a metaphor of many business systems of America, the patients are basically
just a one-time thing for them so the business just wants them in and out as
soon as possible, and it seems they won’t even let the patient get a word in
just like with Dowd.
I found some similarities between Harvey and The Purple
Rose of Cairo. They both focused on the imagination quite a bit. Elwood
imagined his rabbit friend Harvey, and Cecilia imagined Tom Baxter. Although in
both these films the imaginary characters are real. I think that this is not
really saying the imaginary characters are real, but rather saying that the
imagination is more real than most people seem to believe.
This movie seemed to have one section solely focused on
sex. When Veta gets released from the mental institution she comes out saying
that all they think about is sex and they tried to have their way with her. She
didn’t even stop to think that she was thought to be a patient, but came to the
conclusion that they were trying to have sex with her. And after this scene I
don’t think they mentioned sex at all, or before for that matter.
This was a wonderful movie, mostly because of the
character Elwood P. Dowd, and I do believe ill watch this again in the future.
Remember the beginning of the scene that you mention when Sanderson and Kelly said they had "made and error." Elwood took that to mean something very different than they meant.
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