Zelig - 1983 - 4 Stars

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Patrick Horgan


Zelig is a fake documentary about Leonard Zelig: The Human Chameleon. A man who has such an intense desire to be liked that he takes on the characteristics of other people in his environment, including gaining weight, growing facial hair or even changing the colour of his skin if need be. I call Zelig a "fake documentary" and not a "mockumentary" because it predates the original mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap and it shares no stylistic characteristics with Guest films or The Office style TV shows. It is not improvised and has zero talking head interviews. It is not aping fly-on-the-wall documentaries, it is aping historical documentaries. Allen and Gordon Willis impeccably recreate this genre whose primary tools are two classic stimulants: archival footage and professional narration. Casting Patrick Horgan, the voice of dozens of Sherlock Holmes audiobooks, as the narrator, gives the fake documentary authenticity and the film a straight man. Allen plays the funny man and his mannered, nervous speech plays well off Horgan's dry narration. Horgan is delivering monologues for most of the film, but Allen's writing and directing and performance consistently wring laughs out of gags in "historical" pictures, videos and songs.


It can be tough to notice because it's often cloaked in self-deprecation or perfectly-constructed jokes, but Woody Allen is very perceptive about the human condition. His self-deprecation cloaks soul-baring moments in irony, which lessens their emotional impact, but is also true to his characters. Their neuroses are not quirks, but defense mechanisms because the characters are too afraid of saying something honest and direct about themselves without being protected by a veil of cleverness. The documentary framework of Zelig might appear overly clever, but it mirrors Allen's characters; their film is full of winking ironic moments, but the story is still told in a realistic way. The structure allows Zelig to satire documentaries, news media, males roles in society and The Golden Era Hollywood, however Zelig is a minor figure and if his story were told it would probably be told in psych-textbooks and dry black and white documentaries. The commitment to imitating, but not mocking the genre grounds the movie and prevents the pervasive irony from ruining the film's sentiment.


The premise of Zelig seems so broad, like a mediocre SNL sketch, that through the first act I found it hard to believe there would be any insights on human behaviour. However I didn't really care because there are so many great one liners throughout, " I have an interesting case. I'm treating two sets of Siamese twins with split personalities. I'm getting paid by eight people." "I worked with Freud in Vienna. We broke over the concept of penis envy. Freud felt that it should be limited to women." "The Ku Klux Klan, who saw Zelig as a Jew, that could turn himself into a Negro and an Indian, saw him as a triple threat." However as the movie progresses it turns into a poignant fable about conformity, insecurity and neurosis. If one tries to fit in too much they lose their unique humanity, if they constantly speak their mind they are boorish and obnoxious: the goal is to find the unattainable golden mean. Similarly Zelig needs to maintain a tonal balance between a legitimate insight on humanity and killer punchlines that threaten to undermine the earnestness that is earned via the original insight. Fortunately Allen's ability to maintain a tonal balance is one of his great strengths and he succeeds in making a wickedly funny, touching, reflection on neurosis and an effective love story.