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Zelig Movie Review

Zelig is a 1983 mockumentary film starring and directed by Woody Allen. It is one of the director’s best movies.

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“I have an interesting case.

I’m treating two sets of Siamese twins with split personalities.

I’m getting paid by eight people“

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In this fictional documentary, a man achieves notoriety for his ability to look and act like anyone he meets. With his unique talent for mimicry, Zelig ingratiates himself with people from every sector of society. This is one of the rare mockumentaries released in the eighties and one of the best representations of this strange genre. It signaled the most creative era of Allen’s career, which was back when he pumped up so many unique and hilarious flicks that are now classics.

For a mockumentary, the story here is surprisingly rich in themes. The film stood the test of time and it is actually becoming deeper as time goes by. My reading of the story is that it’s all about capitalism and how celebrity and myth creation work in society. This chameleonic man stands for people having to change who they are to appease the masses and to become successful, which made the film a timeless and fascinating sociological study.

But it’s also very much about the director’s usual themes that he explores in so many of his works, in particular focusing on identity and what it means to be Jewish. There were a couple of amusing lines of dialogue here that hinted at his oft-used self-hating persona and that sequence with Hitler is easily the film’s most memorable and hilarious moment.

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But the main reason why Zelig is so iconic lies in its peculiar idiosyncrasies. This is after all such a different, original movie than anything else I’ve seen so far that it truly defies categorization. The story is set in the late twenties and this era is so meticulously depicted through staggering attention to detail that the resulting picture feels as if it really came out during the early sound era.

How Allen succeeded in mixing new with old footage was remarkable and it begs the question how he even managed to do it before the era of computer-generated effects. He put himself alongside many famous people from this period and the resulting imagery is truly impressive. Another highlight is the editing as it’s masterfully done and the film flows so well. It’s a short movie, so it ended up being riveting throughout.

There is also the audio aspect to Zelig that makes it truly incredible. Not only is the score fitting the time period like a glove, but so are the various songs employed that all sound true to the era. A couple of them were quite a lot of fun. But the best aspect has to be the narration and this is coming from a person who is usually apathetic toward this storytelling device. But what Patrick Horgan did here was truly brilliant as his voice, accent and diction very much sounded like they came from the late twenties, and there was a lot of humor mined from that old-fashioned voice saying these funny lines.

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The sound quality and the cinematography are suitably choppy and grainy, thus perfectly echoing this era. Woody Allen surely had a knack at recreating historical eras and here he did possibly his best job at that yet. The only issue was the decision to give his character speaking lines as he sounded too modern for this period. It was unnecessary and it was the only thing that broke the illusion. The movie also could have been even funnier, but still this is the case when style and originality trump true laughs.