Zelig (1983) May 13th, 2024

I’m not a smart man. I don’t know all the words. If there was a word for fictions like Forrest Gump, Little Big Man, and Big Fish wherein the main character is present for a slew of significant historic or magical events, I should like to know it. Zelig is half that sort of film and half When Harry Met Sally.

Woody Allen plays the titular Zelig, a nondescript man with the ability to take on the physical characteristics, mannerisms, and dialect of anyone he’s around. If he’s with Chinese people he begins shapeshifting to resemble them, if he’s around exceptionally fat people he gains weight to match, if he’s around Doctors he beings insisting he has patients and a medical degree. Zelig becomes famous the world over for his abilities but that proves temporary like the rest of his transformations.

Zelig is an odd little movie that overstays its welcome. Set up like a Ken Burns documentary the film uses faux archival footage to depict Zelig everywhere from Nazi Germany to Manhattan as well as charming anecdotal interviews from those who knew him. With a short runtime of only 79 minutes Zelig still feels overlong when at around the 30 minute mark the story begins to feel redundant as bits are retreaded and Woody Allen exhausts all available variants of blackface.

Despite feeling dull and repetitive, Zelig still accomplishes everything its creator set out to achieve. It is a rich cornucopia of film styles and techniques all crammed into one. The varied film stocks utilized in the faux archival footage adds a surreal level of authenticity to a fantastically absurd premise. In those regards I’ve not seen anything like it, but it isn’t particularly funny.

Perhaps I am not a smart man. I do not know all the words, but there should be a term for dully plodding masterful works of auteur filmmaking. Like The Dark Crystal, Avatar, and Zelig.