And although the modern subgenre of pseudo-documentary has come to a standstill, it once flourished. In the early 00s, he was skillfully exploited in horror films such as The Blair Witch, Paranormal Phenomenon, Monster and Report. But if you look at it that way, no worse, and in some ways even better, the mocumentary works in comedy. Borat used this technique to ridicule all the vices of American society at once, Delay in the development skillfully stalked the rich, and Real Ghouls mowed under a documentary about vampires depicted the inability of individual groups of people to adapt to changing realities. And if you take TV series as an example, only the Office and Parks and recreation areas are among the best comedy shows of the 21st century in principle. But who would have thought that one of the best representatives of the comedy mocumentary will not be the 00s or 10s, and in principle not in this century. We are talking about the released in 1983 Zelig, which changed the idea of mocumentary for many.
In short, this is the story of Leonard Zelig. A person who has discovered the ability to literally reincarnate into any people with whom he is close. Be it a fat man, a rabbi, an SS officer, or even a black man. For this, everyone called him a chameleon, able to mimic anyone, and therefore of all kinds of interest to society. The film itself is shot in the style of a documentary portrait and depicts both the person and the era around him. The real film of those years is mixed with a believable imitation of that film. Inside the film there are even interviews with “real eyewitnesses of what happened” and inserts from “really filmed” films. All this allows you to fully immerse yourself in history and understand what it really was.
However, Woody Allen’s director makes a contrast. On the one hand, the film is perfectly stylized to frames of that era and even shots with Allen himself are really combined with a real archival film, and on the other hand, the events seem so improbable and so absurd that it is impossible to believe in this. That’s what the film’s comedy is all about. The further the plot goes, the more absurd it becomes on the screen. At some point, we are told that Zelig captured a German plane and flew head over the Atlantic. It is also funny how seriously both ordinary people and the narrator react to events. The latter makes the story even more believable by its tone. On the one hand, he retains equanimity and tries to tell events impartially, but on the other hand, notes of amazement and interest in what is happening are still felt in his voice. Thanks to the too serious attitude to Zelig, the whole successful comedy of the film is built.
Like all successful mocumentaries, here elements of documentary are used not so much to fool the viewer. It is much more important to show how quickly the mood in society can change. Zelig, like Zelig, no one cared about him. And then it turned out that he had abilities. The crowd immediately broke off the chain and began to monitor the situation. Everyone knows that people need spectacles in the first place, and they found something similar, as if they had stopped following all other events in the world. Moreover, many began to commercialize Zelig, turning Chameleon Man into a brand. But then he gets bored of everyone, and about the "squirrel" quickly forgotten. Then, when he seemed to be freed from his illness, people suddenly turned him into an enemy. Then he pretended to be a painter, although he did not know anything about it, then he gave birth, although he had never previously practiced obstetrics, then in general in unconsciousness he began polygamy, and they had children from him. Only after the feat on the plane, he was somehow absolved of his sins, made a hero and safely forgotten, as often happens with "sensations." In this regard, the film perfectly showed how the mood in society changes and how society can be two-faced.
There is some irony in the image of Zelig. He tried so hard to mimic everyone in a row, so did not want to stand out, that in the end it was this trait that stood out. When Zelig began to be cured, the public said that they did not like him as a chameleon man, for he had committed misdemeanors and even real criminal offenses without knowing it. And that's why he started mimicking again, trying to please society again. It's a vicious circle. He unknowingly commits misdeeds like a chameleon, but if Zelig ceases to be loved, he becomes a chameleon again. The most interesting thing is that despite the grotesque image and exaggeration of events, many people can find something vital in this. We all reincarnate into someone we are not, trying to please everyone in a row, and with social networks this problem has reached a new level.
Zelig, for all its comedic component, is a drama in which there is something to think about. Despite the fact that the very existence of the film seems like a joke, the closer you look at it, the more you realize that this joke can not only make you laugh, but also make you think. Woody Allen is truly a master of cinema, who is able to tell amazing stories in the most unusual film language. Is that his best job? Hardly. His filmography is too extensive. But it’s definitely a movie where you can remember him and understand his depth of thought, and also learn that the mocumentary had more potential. Maybe he's still here.
I was bored with an unequal fight.
You can't beat the whip.
I don't want to be myself.
I'll be like everyone else.
(A. Makarevich)
The main character of the Shyamalan film Split had, I remember, 23 personalities and it was a thriller. Woody Allen, 33 years earlier, had shown something much more terrifying - a man with no personality at all, only in the form of a comedy.
Zelig is certainly one of Allen’s most original films. And what it is - the great eyeglass never explained. A philosophical parable? A witty satire? An ironic interpretation of the search for identity from a representative of the nation most assimilated in the world community? The sarcastic distortion of Nietzsche's theory of the "superman"? A parody of numerous treatises on psychoanalysis, which has become especially fashionable? Or can it be just a joke?
If it's a joke, it's pretty mean. If it is a philosophical parable, it is too funny. If the satire is not sharp enough. In any case, the picture had a huge impact on popular culture. It is safe to say that without Zelig, there would not have been Forrest Gump, certainly as he appeared. There would not be many techniques that were successfully used in subsequent mocumentaries, and a rare brain disorder with similar symptoms would not have such a suitable name.
It is obvious that Allen, with his inherent interest in psychoanalysis, shows himself to be an excellent connoisseur of human nature, bringing to absurdity the not so rare conformism in people. And with this, he unexpectedly and sniperically falls into the present day with all his terrible events. After all, his hero Leonard Zelig is not just a “chameleon man”, he is an adapter, whose desire to be like everything is elevated to the absolute. He is physically incapable of being himself. Allen creates a witty, but no less terrifying portrait of the ideal biomass, taking any species and therefore any opinion for its own (and therefore any propaganda), in the complete absence of critical thinking and attempts at analysis.
It is the ideal slave, helpless and at the same time merciless and omnipotent, a cog in the state machine, ready at any moment to become anything and at any moment to be put into action, ready to do any evil, simply because it does not respond in any way in a devoid of convictions, morality, imagination, principles, ethics - "empty" - soul. Human fluid, taking the form of any vessel in which it is placed. Allen makes it funny, but the horror of realizing the existence of a huge number of similar people in the world does not become less.
Assimilated as a Carpenterian "something" Zelig is capable of good deeds, but they do not come from his self-consciousness, because he does not have any self-consciousness. This is a man-fiction, a man-shell. But this shell is able to hold weapons and carry out orders. It is not for nothing that at one of the moments of the film the hero finds himself among the fascists as in an ideal habitat - in a crowd, near similar ones. Oh, here he is warm and at ease - there is no need to think, and there is always someone important, in charge, who will relieve him of the need to think, feel and take responsibility for his actions. So, starting with the desire to like everyone and be loved, the man depicted by Allen turns out to be a fascist. Interesting career!
But after undergoing a course of treatment and temporarily getting rid of his "impersonality", Zelig becomes an outcast and a criminal, because - paradox - as a thinking unit, the world does not need him so much. The powerful of this world gladly accepted him as a chameleon, as a toy, but immediately rejected him, as soon as sparks of doubt arose in him. The wise are not necessary, the faithful are necessary.
In general, it is a very bleak picture, although it is undoubtedly one of the funniest films of Allen. And yes, the master finds for his hero a way to cure, but, I am afraid, this is only a concession to the genre and the overall positive mood of the film, which, of course, was not conceived as prophetic or of any significance, however, it sounded loudly, namely as an artistic discovery.
In the acting context, neither for Allen nor for Farrow, their work was not a creative discovery, although Allen is absolutely true (almost without changing his eternal image-mask) in the role of a “faceless man from the crowd”, and Farrow looks wonderful in costumes of the 20-30s and is generally charming as always. But from the point of view of the idea itself, the director's plan, stylization, work with a monochrome image and archival frames - the picture is a benchmark!
The abundance of prominent figures of literature, art, science, as well as superbly aged frames and a beautiful montage with a newsreel make the picture an ideal mocumentary (it is funny that filming a tape about a "mimicking person", Allen himself successfully mimics a foreign era and someone else's style) and, therefore, adds truth and emotionality to this already very strong and even evoking arrh.
At the same time, a reflection on individualism, which is strangely mixed with a passionate desire to be like everyone (and therefore no one), and a comedy full of sardonic humor, a comprehension of the inertia, impersonality of the masses, as a step on the way to the emergence of fascism, and a romantic bright picture full of love and tenderness, an amazing film in which absolutely everything is false, but which is real to everything - every thought, every frame! Undoubtedly, Zelig is one of the most amazing, talented and truly creative experiments of world cinema!
10 out of 10
. . . I'm 12 years old. I run into the synagogue... I ask the rabbi about the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life, but in Hebrew. I don't know Hebrew... Then he asks me for $600 for Hebrew lessons. . .
Zelig's film cannot be viewed in isolation from Woody Allen's previous work. Since in many ways the picture is the conclusions of the director of his favorite themes.
Woody Allen's "Classic" is characterized by themes: irrationality, devastation, and human alienation in modern society. His work is largely a film adaptation of his own experience with an admixture of then fashionable psychoanalysis.
The form and content of his films deliberately contradict each other. Behind the seemingly trivial stories, there is often a serious drama of a small, neurotic man.
It seems to me that the main expressive means of the director is the convergence of tragedy and comedy, where one logically continues the other. After all, from the point of view of objective reality, there is practically no difference between tragedy and comedy.
Both genres are characterized by conflict environment and irrationality of a person in this environment. The difference lies only in the emphasis placed by the author in the topic under consideration.
The director chooses a comedy, and creates a whole cinematic universe of positive psychotherapy, where the origins of neurosis are explored both in an individual and in a whole society.
The film Zelig, shot by Woody Allen on his own script, largely sums up his work of the 70s.
Leonard Zelig is a hypertrophied collective image of all Allen's characters. A kind of collective image, all collective images.
If Allen's past characters were representatives of minor psychiatry, Leonard is still in unknown areas of science. His psychosomatic manifestations are brought to absurdity. If an ordinary person, trying to adjust to the canons of society, sacrifices his individuality, then Zelig goes further, changing his own anatomy.
Zelig personifies the essence of conformity, harmful to the development of one’s own personality, but useful for a group of impersonal individuals.
It is the depersonalization of modern man that is the main problem of the film. Every newspaper headline, every broadcast, like every other propaganda tool, brings the public interest to a common denominator.
Depersonalization helps to predict the reaction of the public, and thereby increase sales. It is no coincidence that it is the reportage and documentary that determine the form of this film.
We become as passionate viewers of history as those people reading the tabloid New York Press of the 20s. And we have to believe things that are happening on screen that may never have happened. But what we have to accept as truth in order to immerse ourselves in history.
In addition, archival chronicles and old film give the impression of rare, and therefore valuable knowledge. With this artistic tool, the author manipulates our attention, overestimating the significance of what is happening on the screen.
This postmodernist approach against the viewer helps us better understand what we see and criticize our own interests.
Conformity and withdrawal from it is the main engine of the plot. Leonard, a man with a strange defect is of great interest precisely because he is not like everyone else, although the irony is that he is indistinguishable from everyone else.
In any case, the main intellectuals of the time, namely the psychoanalysts, believed that he needed treatment to make him a normal member of society. But as soon as Dr. Fletcher succeeds and Zelig becomes an independent person, a barrage of negativity descends upon him. Members of the public recall all the problems caused to them by Zelig, completely ignoring the nature of his illness.
At the same time, the feat he accomplished under the influence of the same ailment is already considered by society as a genius, providing him with universal love and respect.
This cognitive bias is at the root of many social conflicts. If you’ve done a bad thing, nobody cares about your problems, but if you’re doing something good with those same problems, the problems stop being problems.
The film reflects many of the problems of industrial society. Because it is in industrial society, in the age of megacities, developed media, and strong ideology, that trivial human qualities become a real social bomb.
Individuality is a controversial thing, a person can strive for it all his life, spending huge resources on the development of his personality. But after a large amount of time and effort, a person may find that he is not understood by anyone, and that he is left with his individuality alone.
Conformism is a dangerous thing, it is Zelig’s inability to endure persecution, and therefore loneliness, that provokes him to show an extreme degree of conformity – to join the ranks of the Nazi party.
The solution to this conflict can lie in humor, because it is humor that helps to look at things more distantly, it is thanks to comedy that you can see all the contradictions that have ripened in society.
The tragedy drives into the drag, narrowing the viewer’s attention to automatic, but very vivid reactions. Comedy Woody Allen, allows you to expand the attention, and take into account more details, for effective therapy on yourself!
39 I worked with Freud in Vienna. We fought over the concept of penis envy. Freud believed that it should be limited only to women.' (c) Zelig.
Black and white, specific, unlike anything comedy called 'Zelig' recognized as one of the best creations of Woody Allen. This amazing director has made so many wonderful and beloved films, and starting to watch any of his movies, you get into something incredible. Comedy or drama - Woody immerses the viewer in the heat of human passions.
But here's his film ' Zelig' nothing like his other films. A trial film shot in a pseudo-documentary genre - mocumentari is a kind of pioneer in this direction of cinema, and Woody succeeded.
Definitely ironic picture original and with subtle humor. Before us is the top of the fame of Woody Allen, and one of the most unusual creations in the world of big cinema. By the way, I recently watched the unscrupulous comedy ' Seven Days in Hell' with Keith Harington (the world-famous role of Jon Snow from Game of Thrones), and so all the time I remembered the film ' Zelig', the comedy is also shot in a rare genre of mocumentary, and there is something in it from Zelig, I felt it.
Comedy film 'Zelig' of course much larger, more thoughtful and cunning.
In this story we see America 1920-1930. The Jew Leonard Zelig at first glance seems an ordinary and gray man, but he is not. He has an amazing ability. Mr. Zelig can adapt, adapt, and then completely reincarnate into any person. If he communicates with African Americans, he becomes one of them, if with the Chinese, then with them, if with the Democrats, he thinks and thinks as they use conformity, and if with the Republicans, he already thinks differently, as they change again. One female doctor studies Zelig and her research is unprecedented.
The case when Alain and director, and screenwriter, and actor in the lead role. His picture is a comedy world of Woody, which he has transported to the screen in detail from his head, without the intervention of others. At that time, Woody Allen was already very popular, and great horizons opened before his work, and he confidently and decisively shot his unique film.
For me personally, his film ' Zelig' away from all his other works. There is everything, everything, all his films together, but this movie is separate and it is one. This comedy film is so unusual and incomparable.
The female role is played by Mia Farrow. As everyone knows, Farrow in many films played Woody, and this movie was the second, where she was as an actress. Her first role in the film Woody & #39;Summer Night Sex Comedy' 1982 - failed, and film critics criticized Mia Farrow in that film. Even awarded the actress a shameful nomination for Golden Raspberry.
In 'Zelig' Farrow reincarnated and already played well. It was from this moment that luck began, and the actress opened up. After all, all her subsequent roles in Woody films were good.
39 When Leonard was a child, he was often bullied by anti-Semites. His parents, who had never been in his position and accused him of everything, sided with the anti-Semites. They often punished him by locking him in a dark closet. When they were particularly angry ... they would lock themselves in the closet with him.'
There are films that are unique and unprecedented in nature that every moviegoer should appreciate. That's what I would say about this picture, because it is actually like this.
'Zelig' is an American, pseudo-documentary comedy from 1983. Extremely witty, funny film with a very unusual story presented in the ironic style of Woody Allen, its subsequent charm and subtleties of this creator of humorous cinema. Good mood and good movies for everyone.
Zelig ZELIG WE L and G... Ce L and G... Zelig... Zelig ...
Interesting, unusual and original. I have never seen anything like this before, the maestro continues to amaze. This is how to mix documentary, historical and comedy genres, and even to make it look so organic – it is necessary to try very hard, the work has been done colossal. And it all looks easy and with pleasure, a lot of very ironic moments, although the film is quite sad. The atmosphere of the 20s is conveyed perfectly, what is happening on the screen believe without question, operators should be praised separately. In general, the film is very interesting, be yourself and “do not bend under the changing world.”
8 out of 10
Without exaggeration, the brilliant black and white film of Woody Allen with him himself in the title role, shot in the genre of "mocumentary" or pseudo-documentary and telling the fictional story of the life of a certain Leonard Zelig in the 1920s-30s - one strange and unusual type, able to literally change his appearance and adapt to the behavior of people around him. The most witty, inventive, subtle, fascinating and perfect in the technical embodiment of the picture (for the sake of achieving the effect of antiquity, Woody and his cameraman Gordon Willis aged and then trampled the film), in which the atmosphere of silent cinema is absolutely accurately captured and transmitted, as well as the schematic techniques and principles of creating documentaries are unevilly ridiculed.
“All this is so believable and funny that it can’t be true!” you exclaim, and such a slogan can be given to this picture. Although in fact she does not need it - and without it, an hour and a half of pure pleasure is guaranteed! Well, in the end, one can not help but ask the question accompanying the whole film: “And who among us is not Zelig?” In fact, Zelig is in every one of us!
10 out of 10
As long as you live and the breath is in you, do not replace yourself with anyone. The Old Testament.
The brilliant director Woody Allen has long won the hearts of many film lovers. Now, his new projects are waiting with dying millions of fans from all over the world. The most famous actors agree to star in his films for a small fee. Despite the small budget of Allen’s films, he will be able to create soulful, vivid and memorable stories. Zelig will meet all your expectations. It contains a drop of irony, and the original plot, and extraordinary characters, and, of course, morality.
From the first shot, it seems that you are watching a genuine documentary. But in reality, the film is mounted with real documentary footage, the participants of which are famous personalities of the early 20s of the twentieth century. For example, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Charlie Chaplin, Al Capone, Josephine Baker, Marion Davis, etc.
The film takes place in America of the 20s of the last century. In the age of jazz, prohibition and moral decline. At this time, the main character Zelig appears, the personification of the generation of the 20s. He is sick with an amazing psychological illness, the ability to reincarnate in his interlocutor. He has the ability to change skin color, voice, eye color, hair color, weight, depending on who he communicates with. The worst thing for Zelig is to be misunderstood by others to protect himself from the world, he becomes a chameleon man. Hiding behind the guise of other people, he hides from responsibility and problems. Zelig feels safe merging among the crowd. He wants to be loved. But to society, he's just part of the show, a new sensation. And only Dr. Judora Fletcher wants to heal Zelig, help him find his own identity.
Zelig is just a fiction, but unfortunately, there are many people who have lost their identity in order to adapt to the society around us. Man must have his own opinion about all things and processes occurring outside and inside the world around him, otherwise nothing distinguishes him from the animal.
10 out of 10
Where terrible punks and chameleons can be psychiatrists, fat people and blacks
It's the best mocumentary, and it's really funny, which is what you would expect from Woody. A chameleon man who can be anything from a psychoanalyst to a nigger to a fat man is actually unhappy. He has lost his identity and does not know who he is. The whole film is saturated with grotesque and black satire, but despite all the absurdity, you can see the sincere words of the characters, for example, in such dialogues:
Zelig: It's safer to be like everyone else.
JUDORA: Do you want to avoid the danger?
Zelig: I want to be loved.
Udora Fletcher (Mia Farrow) and Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) are inexplicably cute in the film, both together and separately. They create a harmonious pair and no less harmonious shots alone. A harmonious couple and cute discomfort create the mood of the film. Yudora Fletcher is a brilliant psychoanalyst capable of curing a chameleon who has acquired his own individuality in all strangers at once. Yudora is a skinny cutie in glasses and stretched cardigans, always smoking and versed in her business. Like Zelig and Woody Allen himself. Leonard is a nervous, impetuous and hiding chameleon man.
There are many allusions, familiar Woody-Allen humor and satire. And also the funny footage and the belief that this absurdity is pure truth. It’s a movie that you have to watch anyway. Those who love documentary films; those who love mocumentaries; those who love Woody Allen; those who love satire and black humor; those who love psychoanalysis; those who love stylish cinema; those who love movies and good movies.
P.S.: Turn on "Bernie Knee - Doin the Chameleon" and sing along, scrolling through the funny pictures of the film in your head.
9 out of 10
It's a beautiful movie. Not that it struck something, or inspired, but just when watching it did not leave a sense of calm, because everything that was shown on the screen is absolutely true. How wonderful it is that Woody has moved away from his favorite subject of the relationship between man and woman (plus psychoanalysis and so on), and has shown a very, very important vice of modern society. I don't know what to call him. “Hypocrisy,” “vanity,” or “imitation,” I’m sure everyone will have their own picture and understanding. Chameleon man, the quintessence of all modern society. The “chameleon” here is Allen himself, walking through life a man uncertain, and in something constantly alarmed. Take on other people’s lives and professions. He tries to get smart and he gets it on the fat five.
The era Woody chose is also a lucky one. The Jazz Age, 20s New York, is such a great choice for me. A time when morality, and all that follows from it, began to wither away and became as dry as the name of the law that reigned then. And then, unexpectedly and unexpectedly, people found their sensation! A man who has become a man with whom he speaks. And of course, his name began to appear on the front pages of newspapers, on radio and television. Scientists are very interested in this phenomenon. I will not give you all the details.
Most importantly, and most importantly, Allen was able to show so ironically and unpretentiously that a person loses himself, he bends to the stronger, yields to them in everything, is burning with the desire to be loved and longs for recognition. Naff said.
And finally, I would like to mention the style of shooting that Allen chose – Mocumentari. Precise hit. All this pseudo-documentary narrative, footage from the past and famous people immortalized on film, all this deserves to be viewed and appreciated.
An ordinary man named Leonard Zelig becomes a famous person after he discovers the unique ability to physically and spiritually reincarnate into anyone: from Charlie Chaplin to Adolf Hitler, from fat man to Chinese. And, most importantly, the great imitator does not know the limits of perfection.
Having worked out a parody theme by the mid-1970s, then making himself an object for self-irony, having been a little American Bergman and Fellini, Allen made a grand breakthrough in 1983, penetrating, in fact, into the past. He made not a retro-fiction movie in the usual sense (such as "Back to the Future"), but rather pseudo-historical: he took and settled his hero in the newsreel of the twentieth century.
Someone probably remembers how in 1994 everyone went crazy watching the brave adventures of Forrest Gump. The reception of chronic adventures was so popular with the media that it began to be actively replicated. One of the first to respond to the novelty, our Leonid Parfenov, made of this chip a whole series of screensavers for his "Daydni". However, this innovation at that time was almost 11 years old. In any case, Woody Allen built his “Zelig” entirely on this effect.
This movie tells about a phantom-unicum, a conformist-chameleon, able to take on the guises of surrounding people. The ability to mimic allows a little man to achieve incredible social success, overcome the many vicissitudes of the century, survive wars, disasters and other force majeure situations.
If during the cult of personality unknown scribes of history by order from above easily eliminated in the pictures by means of photomontage people undesirable to the regime, Allen performed the reverse operation: he supplemented, or rather, his hero story, turning it into a prank. Actually, the cult of personality and the cult of stars (Zelig is simply a mega-star of the mid-twentieth century) are twin brothers, but Allen adds another global cult - cinema, and in two years another film - "The Purple Rose of Cairo" will devote to this phenomenon.
In Zelig, you can find echoes of the scandal of the next century. I mean using the face of the late Laurence Olivier, unbeknownst to him, attached to the movie "Heavenly Captain and the World of Tomorrow." Allen 21 years ago put on the agenda the question of (a) the morality of exploitation of historical characters, predicting that the era of grandiose manipulation and hoaxes, one way or another, will want to subordinate the past to its interests.
Already 21 years ago, Allen worked on positioning mechanisms: how to make a phantom man a star through myth-making. And three years before that, he had already tried the technique of “cinema in the movies” in “Memories of Stardust”, parody stylized as Fellinian “Eight and a Half”. But only in Zelig, in a kind of imaginary documentary dystopia, he was able to pull the metaphysical layer to the surface.
But before Allen had to look through 6 kilometers of chronicle film, and choosing the best, infiltrate it. Coupled with cameraman Gordon Willis (who filmed The Godfather), they did their black and white business without resorting (unlike Zemekis Parfyonov) to computer mediation. That is, they were sorcerers at the assembly table, in chemical laboratories, spending much more effort and time on this than their epigones.
Zelig has set another precedent for an “unnoticed masterpiece.” This happens from time to time: Kubrick, for example, did not indulge in prizes for two of his breakthrough films – “Space Odyssey” and “Clockwork Orange”. There is no place left for Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. Reggio's Koyaniskatsi was not immediately received adequately. And the list can go on...
“Zelig” is definitely not a film that could fully represent the entire extensive filmography of Woody Allen, be a 90-minute concentrate of directorial style and handwriting of the famous Jew. This tape does not fit in a row with Allen's films of the late 70s, early 80s, such as "Annie Hall", "Manhattan" or "A Midsummer Night Sex Comedy". Almost completely abandoning the already established and beloved by the viewer author’s techniques, the director of this film goes into a completely different niche. What is most important - Woody Allen in this attempt to shoot an impressive author's film, thereby once and for all removing all questions about his professional fitness.
The pseudo-documentary genre, combined with the humor and intelligence of Woody Allen, gives rise to a non-standard and memorable film in which a combination of trifles, a rapid transition of frames and the absence of long episodes play a critical role, which in turn was noted by numerous awards in the technical field. Despite the insignificant timekeeping, when using these techniques, you get the feeling after watching that the viewer appreciated not one short film, but a television mini-series broadcast on weekends for a month. The number and quality of episodes, interviews, static shots, chronicles and many other scenes described by the narrator’s voiceover remove from taking the side of any of the characters of the film, remove unnecessary emotions and allow you to concentrate on rational perception and understanding of this unusual story about an unusual man in the entourage of America at the turn of 20-30 years.
Leonard Zelig is presented as a completely inexplicable and fantastic element of his era. At the same time, beyond the age of events and generations, as well as under the wagging of the pseudo-documentary manner of the film, at a certain point everything that happens on the screen can be mistaken for the truth. The character, the emotional side, his preferences and shortcomings, the background and motives of the character are almost completely brought to the mocumentary altar, which is completely unlike Woody, who, as you know, can not but endow the main character with his face and manners. He could not completely abandon this, leaving the first role for himself, but his Zelig is shown only as a small man around whom events develop with uncontrollable speed, on which he can no longer influence with all his desire. And this can only mean one thing - the main character is not Zelig, not Dr. Fletcher, but the narrator, personifying in his voiceover the whole of America.
Woody Allen made a film about American history and the American people. Zelig is only an excuse to create his own alternate story, to show the transience of fashion and events, and how one unusual person can leave his mark on his generation. And also that this trail can disappear as quickly as it appeared.
Anyway, but "Zelig" became a benefit of Allen-director, not Allen-actor. Fans of his manner are indistinct, quickly talk and watch the development of numerous intrigues, intrigues and love moods of many incarnations of the actor will have little to enjoy here. But it will be extremely curious to abstract from this attractive image of a short man wearing horny glasses and, looking at the footage of this film, see another, less noticeable, but no less prominent side of Woody Allen.
In his best and, perhaps, the only film, which without any reservations can be enrolled in the masterpieces of cinema, Woody Allen managed in an unusually capacious and expressive, and at the same time concise form, to identify, directly or indirectly, global existential and ontological problems, both individual and society as a whole, on the path of the development of Western civilization, to which hundreds of volumes of philosophical, psychoanalytic and fiction have been devoted throughout the XIX-XXXX centuries. I will not try to formulate them all, highlighting only the central and most obvious. This is a mass phenomenon of conformity and forgetting of individuality. Its roots, of course, go deep into childhood. As you know, with young nails, a person is constantly instilled in certain dogmas and rules. And then intuitively, and having grown up consciously, he clearly learns that in order to be loved, and just to survive, it is necessary, roughly speaking, to become like everyone else. The Freudian “principle of reality” triumphs.
On the example of his hero - Zelig - Allen embodies this idea on the screen in literal terms - using a popular dialectical method - in grotesque clarity, bringing it to the absurd. As a result, its paradoxical essence is revealed: only after completely losing its own personality, merging with the environment, like a chameleon, turning into a “man without properties”, only then does Zelig gain an attractive individuality in the eyes of others. It follows that conformity in its absolute form, in the mass consciousness, becomes identical with the extreme degree of individualism raised by the crowd into a cult, a fetish, a role model. The main reason for the total alienation of modernist society emerges: no one needs and is not interested in a person himself, only a replicated, “promoted” image is in demand, in fact a fiction.
Even if we close our eyes to the fact that almost all of the main characters in Allen’s films are Jews, of course Leonard Zelig could not have been anything other than a Jew, in the allegorical nature of his role embodying the eternal need of a “god-chosen” people for cultural assimilation.
And, of course, Allen would not be himself if he did not sprinkle a grain of satire all over the canvas, sprouting either with subtle, in his inherent manner, irony, or outright sarcasm. Everyone deserved it – traditionally: psychoanalysts, newspapermen, Catholics, Jews themselves, and then on the list: Freud, the Pope, Hitler, Carnegie, the Ku Klux Klan, the “luminaries” of science, Hollywood, just a stupid layman and the whole system. And almost always it is apt, resourceful and funny.
As for the artistic quality of the picture and the professionalism of its creators, so much has been written about it in detail that there is essentially nothing to add, it remains only to be repeated - in the genre of pseudo-documentary cinema, this is an unsurpassed work. Indeed, if you cut out scenes where an undisguised farce is played out, you can easily believe in the authenticity of the shooting. And this was at a time when computer tricks could only be imagined. In short, high class.
Anyone who is more or less passionate about the art of cinema should see this picture, if so far for some misunderstanding has not done so.
9 out of 10
My reviews, and such that they were voluminous, I write quite rarely. But after watching this tape, for some reason I wanted to put everything I think.
So, I came across this film when I was looking for good comedies on the Movie Search (fortunately, most of what I filtered that day left a different impression on me). For a long time I couldn’t find a moment to watch. But that day has come (although I should rightly point out that I didn’t expect anything special from the movie). I was not even confused by the fact that in the beginning it is said that the film is a mocumentary genre (a mixture of documentary). I can't say anything unequivocal. It's really not a bad idea. Implementation? Wait here! We wanted to make a feature film — please, a documentary — no problem, I’m all for it. But why put it together? By the way, I note that I like to watch semantic movies. But again, I didn't see any point here. Moreover, I would not have signed this tape to the genre of comedy in my life. As a result, he endured 50 minutes, did not endure much. I turned it off because I didn’t really understand what was happening on the screen. It resembles some kind of chronicle, but not competently put.
In general, there were mixed feelings. For the idea - plus, for the implementation - minus, that is, 50/50. So, it will be natural to put this “picture” 5 out of 10, with all due respect to Woody Allen.