Review Of The Film Zelig 1983
Zelig 1983 is an American Mockumentary production that is defined as a fake document and Woody Allen had made this film in this kind. When we watch the movie from Woody Allen’s point of view, the spectators can persuade as if he had filmed it as documentary, not like the reality. In other words, he rolled the Leonardo Zelig character like Woody Allen in the real life.
The film was made up in fiction logic but actually the technique was set in a documentary kind. In addition, Woody Allen had succeeded montage photographs, fiction dialogues and interviews scenes were given real feeling and impressions to the audiences. We can also emphasize that, this film is given the explanation that how 1920s America entertained and how the Jazz music captured the people’ lives and attention in those days. When we analyze the Zelig character, in one of the scenes in the movie, in New York Yankees baseball match, Babe Ruth was playing with other player from the against team and suddenly, one undefined man appeared behind Babe Ruth and this actually was Zelig. The next day, this scene was given to all media groups as a big news and everyone thought that whether Leonard Zelig was real and this brought questions in the watchers mind. After a couple of months, character Zelig had disappeared and police officers had made some search where he was but they could not be able to find him. After that he had been seen in China Town in New York City and he was taken to the hospital because he had caught by chameleon disease. He was coming from Chinese race in China Town but after he arrived to hospital, he turned into white race.
During his recovery period in the hospital, Zelig has met with Dr. Eudora Fletcher who is a psychiatrist and helped him to get over this identity depression. In Dr. Eudora’s house scene, Zelig assumed his self as a Doctor but from Eudora’s answer was “you are not a doctor and you can’t pretend as you are”. In the following scene, Dr. Eudora pretend like she is a patient of Zelig and told him one of her problem but Zelig could not be able to solve her problem, in that moment Zelig’s identity had been broken down and Dr. Eudora could reach her goal about Zelig’s identity depression and hypnoses him. Actually, Zelig is one of the examples of society pressure that destroyed his personal identity in the public. Specific to Zelig, he is reflecting the experiments of most of the Jewish people that lived in USA at that time; Zelig’s existence actually is not being existent in the society. Furthermore, during his childhood period, Zelig has been exposed to Jewish people’ attack and his family punished him by locking in a dark small room. Middle and East part of the European countries, Jewish society had been tried to destroy and in general, because of this, Jewish Genocide had given the hardest affect with the settlement of Israel government and this led to Jewish issue growth in the world.
In the movie, the director Woody Allen showed this with four different faces of Zelig and those four men were standing their hands tied up behind and ropes were closed to their heads and this execution scene was presenting how the Jewish people were struggling with their real identity within the societies in the world. Woody Allen with Mockumentary film make us watch fake characters but the scenes and events were taken from the real livings.
