**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Woody Allen and Mia Farrow.
Directed & written by Woody Allen.
1983 PG
Woody Allen’s “Zelig” is a thought-provoking tale of a man so unsure of himself, with so little self-confidence, that he is actually able to physically transform in order to fit in with those around him. Put him around fat people, and he gains weight, put him around people of different skin color, and he begins to match them. Put Zelig with doctors and psychiatrists and he begins to talk like them. Rarely has the seductive danger of conformity been more poignant. What makes the film “Zelig” both additionally intriguing and difficult to watch is that the entire film is told in a documentary format, as if Zelig were an actual person who became famous in the 1920s. Zelig the man is essentially a non-personality, and perhaps the only way to film such a phenomenon is to keep the audience a few steps away from him. The drawback to this approach is that we’re always two-arm’s lengths away from the story; I was intrigued by “Zelig” but seldom drawn in.
The technical prowess of “Zelig” ranks close to “Forrest Gump” in its ability to place Woody Allen-as-Leonard Zelig within historical film footage. We see him at ticker-tape parades, at baseball games, at political conventions. Much of this is actual footage from the 1920s, with Allen inserted, and the rest is new footage that has been magicked to match. Allen, as writer-director, has mimicked the documentary style of the likes of Ken Burns as well as Zelig mimics those around him; we see still photographs, we hear tape-recorded interviews between Zelig and his psychiatrist (Mia Farrow), we see “old” newspapers, and we even see interviews of actual modern historians and sociologists who have joined Allen in the joke. Only occasionally do we see scenes play out traditionally, when Zelig’s headshrink is able to have their sessions filmed. The sounds of the period are recreated as well as the images, as new music in the old style is melded seamlessly with genuine period pieces.
Zelig’s story takes him from hospitals to freakshows until he ultimately becomes a media and political pawn. While stricken with his chameleonism, Zelig is used by all sides of the political spectrum as representing what’s wrong or what’s right with America. When cured, Zelig is glorified as the embodiment of free-thinking, even though he essentially still has no thoughts of his own. Allen has fun toying with those who interpret history and pop culture phenomena; we see liberal arts professors pontificating endlessly about Zelig’s “meaning” while we read between the lines that he was ordinary and bland.
Aside from the big concepts at play in “Zelig” Allen’s typical humor comes only in brief spurts. At eighty or ninety minutes “Zelig” still runs a little longer than its faux-documentary style could keep my undivided attention; forty-five minutes or an hour would be more appropriate. “Zelig” is a film of solid intellect but hit-and-miss storytelling. The movie is more interesting to have seen and talk about than to actually watch.
Finished June 24, 2002
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