ZELIG

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Leonard Zelig

Trailer

Y

  Taking the opening newsreel of Citizen Kane and dragging it out to film-length is a gamble, but Woody’s rolled some snake eyes and he’s riding off in a Cadillac made of solid dollars. Stylistically, Zelig sits in the Allen Canon (presumably a small tube with an ‘INADAQUACY!’ flag hanging out the end of it) as another amazing anomaly like Shadows and Fog: it’s certainly as daring in its cinematography, which perfectly captures the strange fascination we have for old footage and dares to use it for the twisted obsessions of its author’s brain. Zelig is a film with something to say, and it says it in a compelling and entertaining way. It’s funny, it’s moving, it’s sad and stupid and clever and it twists like a barber shop spiral in a typhoon. Primarily concerned with identity, how it shapes both the individual and the world around them, the life story of Leonard Zelig is the story of the modern world packed into the body of small, wirey man. Over the course of his life the film takes in war, celebrity, money, comedy, race, class, music, love, death and jazz, a proto- Forrest Gump with more wit and tenderness shot through it than Tom Hanks’ entire gurning career. Yet another one of Allen’s pet obsessions writ large, its final stroke of genius is to entice real-world commentators and philosophers to gabble on about its knockabout trawl through history, with Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow and someone called, brilliantly, Bricktop all chuckling along and reminiscing about a man who didn’t exist in more ways than one.  Funny, breezy and thoughtful, it’s one of his deepest and most enjoyable works so far, worth as many watches as the number of personalities he tosses out.