Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Zelig (1983)



Then Bought as part of the great HMV dvd splurge of 2004.

Now Though Woody frequently makes films with universal themes, few have quite the rolling pertinence of Zelig. The story of a man who lacks his own individuality, apparently appropriating the psychological and genetic make-up of the person standing next to him because he feels as though he needs to fit in, it speaks directly to everyone from the child in the playground who subsumes themselves in a chosen subculture in order to make friends to the office worker who doesn’t miss soap operas or watches the football so that they have something to talk with their colleagues about (even though they lack an interest in either). The film’s direct example of this is the indoctrination of the German people into fascism.

In the modern age, as I enunciated in my fearful essay about Things White People Like, we’re all Zeligs intellectually hoovering up different areas of culture, assuming trendy political tastes or dressing alike. The process isn’t as extreme as Leonard; if we stand next to a hipster on the bus we don’t automatically grow two day old stubble (or cropped hair if you’re a girl), start drinking lattes and reading MAKE on our iPad. It’s a more gradual process, and unlike the human chameleon’s malady, it’s contagious and we give it euphemisms like “being fashionable” or “ahead of the curve” (even though someone will have been at the front of that long chain, usually Ann Wintour or an advertising executive – assuming they’re different things).

It’s something Woody was very aware of. In the Bjorkman intervuiew he’s far more interested in this philosophical layer than the technical achievement of producing this entirely convincing mock documentary whose authenticity has grown with age. He briskly bats aside questions about what he and Gordon Willis did to the footage to make it look as broken and “re-discovered” (20s lenses, deliberate negative scratches) but then offers this long paragraph on his inspiration:
”I think it’s a personal train in everybody’s life. It began in Zelig’s life when he said that he read Moby Dick. And you often find this with many people. Somebody asks, “Have you read this or that?” and the other one says, “Yeah, yes, of course,” even if he hasn’t. Because they want to be liked and be part of the group. I wanted to make a comment with the film on the specific danger of abandoning one’s own true self, in an effort to be liked, not to make trouble, to fit in and where that leads one in life with every aspect and where that leads on a political level. It leads to utter conformity and utter submission to the will and requirements and needs of a strong personality.”
Shot simultaneously with A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy it’s another expression of Mia’s range this closeted psychologist far removed from the corseted temptress who managed to seduce three different men in the country. But her presence is much stronger than Allen’s – Zelig exists largely through exposition and photographs and it’s a quiet victory that the director is able to create such a sympathetic fictional character without any of the usual fictional narrative tricks. He even employs a third person narrator. Imagine Forrest Gump without the framing bench device. This is risky stuff.

What increases legitimacy of the fiction is the participation of real figures mixed with amateur actors playing the older versions of Zelig et al in contemporary colour footage reflecting backwards. Lilian Gish was apparently shot but not used for some reason, but Susan Sontag is there, the feminist giant gamefully and convincingly offering some pop psychology about this fictional figure. But it was fifteen years after perhaps her most famous quote (every intellectual has one): "Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history." If ever there was a sentence requiring an update …

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