Zelig [Region 2] dvd movie.|
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![Zelig [Region 2]](/pictures/Zelig-j.jpg) |
Features • PAL In Theaters : 15 July, 1983 |
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Zelig [Region 2] description The thinking person's Forrest Gump, Woody Allen's 1983 Zelig is a funny, atmospheric mock-documentary about the collision of one man's manifest neuroses colliding with key moments in 20th-century history. Allen plays the title character, a self-effacing, timorous fellow with such a porous personality that he physically becomes a reflection of whoever he is with. Complex and painstaking, the film's pre-Gump special effects manage to place Allen, buried under a series of makeup and prosthetic guises, in a number of scenes along with Adolf Hitler at a Nazi rally, a pope at the Vatican, and famous guests at a garden party hosted by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Similar in tone and satire to some of Allen's short, comic pieces published in The New Yorker magazine, Zelig is a one-note movie that takes its delicious time establishing the fullness of its central joke. It's well worth the wait. --Tom Keogh |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Mia Farrow's finest |
| While seconding the five star reviews here, I must ask you please to permit me to suggest you view this film in a double feature with [[ASIN:B00005O06I Broadway Danny Rose]] to see the spectrum of Farrow's collaboration with Mr. Allen. I confess I have not seen their later film [[ASIN:B00005O06J Hannah and Her Sisters]], but hear that also reflects the evolution of their somewhat fruitful relationship, although after its ultimate and excruciating tragic ending in litigation and merciless custody battles.
In any case, kindly view this film in relationship with Broadway Danny Rose. Both Farrow and Allen remain in view almost constantly throughout both films, and yet we might call Rose Allen's film, as she remains hidden behind a stone face and large dark glasses as a gun moll throughout, until her ultimate catharsis, delivered with the same statuesque face while Allen shows his chops extremely well (her few deviations from the hard character might be when her glasses fall during the hilarious wriggling scene, and when he praises her jungle concept for interior decoration, the first to do so, at which point she grows visibly vulnerable and the ice maiden for one instant melts). But we have not come to praise Danny Rose but to bury him. This here is clearly Farrow's movie, and displays brilliantly the full spectrum of her acting ability. It is very real, and very good. Check her character's quick peeks at her brother's camera when the hypnotized Zelig admits her wants to go to bed with her. Check her constant humility and strong perseverance amongst the really off the wall medical experts, all male, at a time when it was nearly impossible for a woman to be accepted as a peer in the psychiatric profession. Allen does the best he can with a difficult character, letting the wardrobe do the acting and playing a real jerk who cannot just relax and be himself, and when he does only offends. His character is not designed to be very likeable; Allen has given a great prize however to Farrow with this role, which when seen in a double feature with BDR as mentioned above, really makes you appreciate her perhaps for the first time as a gifted and intelligent actor. It is a great tragedy for our cinema these two very gifted and talented and creative people could not negotiate a longer artisitc life together than these two retro black and white films. Neither would hit these heights again, not for all the [[ASIN:B00003CXGS Small Time Crooks]] or [[ASIN:B00005O06L The Purple Rose of Cairo]] or [[ASIN:B00003CY6A The Curse of the Jade Scorpion]] or can watch; you might as well give up and get out [[ASIN:B000C15OF8 Take the Money and Run - Uncut (Widescreen Edition)]], another example of a Woody Allen mock-documentary delivered in the nicotine stained, earnest voice of a late fifties announcer, and have a good laugh. Meanwhile, please forgive this meditation on the Tragedy of Farrow and Allen. Zelig is marvelous and subtle. Like James Joyce's Nausicaa episode in [[ASIN:0394743121 Ulysses (Gabler Edition)]], it takes awhile to remember you are experiencing a parody, a brilliant parody faithful to the form while mocking its superficiality and inevitably erroneous nature. In fact it is so faithful to the form that the narrating voice cannot be replaced; the narrator is an essential actor in this tale, as is the chorus of narrators who take over James JOyce's Ulysses, and thus you will not find here a French or Spanish soundtrack as on other Allen films, but only subtitles, reasonably well done. Of the two I prefer Broadway Danny Rose with its evangelical message of Acceptance, Forgiveness and Love (as Rose continually repeats: "without meaning to be didatic nor facetious"). This film explicitly states that Zelig's conformism inevitably leads to totalitarian fascism, and this also is a message we must never forget. I wish that Farrow and Allen might have been permitted to accept, forgive and to love, and to continue producing great cinema, the only ones apparently that Allen put all of his great and compassionate heart and considerable and serious mind into, yet let's be thankful we have these two, and see them again. [[ASIN:B00005NVDF Play It Again, Sam]]. |
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