Its concept—Woody plays a guy who physically and
philosophically takes on the characteristics of the people surrounding him
while having no true identity or ideology of his own—is definitely gimmicky,
and the film is not nearly as funny as Love
and Death, Sleeper, or Take the Money and Run (its funniest scenes find Zelig believing himself to be the doctor during psychoanalytic sessions), but Allen does
find more to work with than he did with his other gimmick pictures. His attack
on conformity and the way a lack of ideals can abet the rise of fascism ensures his film is no ideology-deprived Leonard Zelig, though
the neat trick of transforming his features in make up and placing him in
historical photographs ultimately
devolves into a repetitive device that carries too much of the picture. Things also
get dicey when he starts morphing into a black jazz musician, a
feather-capped Native American, a robed Asian, and a Mexican in a mariachi band. Fortunately, he cannot transform into a woman. Whether or not he can transform into a chicken is left unanswered.
As is often the case in Allen’s eighties films, it’s up to
Mia Farrow to infuse the film with some heart, and she does so as a
psychologist determined to find the man inside the chameleon. Of course, she
ends up falling in love with him, which is almost as confounding as the real
Farrow falling in love with the real Allen. Conforming with both romantic
comedy clichés and Woody Allen-movie clichés, I guess there is a little bit of
Zelig in Zelig, after all.
Zelig presents a
particular challenge in terms of high-definition presentation as it is a mixed
bag of scratchy "vintage" stock and "contemporary" color footage. The vintage footage that dominates the movie is deliberately aged with scratches, blemishes, and off-focus photography, so it is not the best test of presentation. The color footage looks good, although white speckles appear throughout. The heavy grain of these shots is very much in keeping with the Allen aesthetic. Bonus
content is limited to an isolated score/effects track and a trailer. Get it on
Screen Archives Entertainment.com here.
