woody allen's "zelig" was not as story driven as i was hoping. or maybe i was just really tired. i actually fell asleep during this movie which means i was exhausted or it wasn't "annie hall". either way i say pass on this one till you've watched everything else. it was filmed like a documentary about a man who transforms, physically, into the people he is with --but only men. with women he's quite charming. when he's hanging out with very overweight men, he turns into an overweight man. he talks with orthodox jews and he grows a beard and he's suddenly wearing black and white. with the chinese he turns into a chinese man. it gets slightly more complicated, but i fell asleep during that part and don't remember much after. there are cameos (of course) by famous people, susan sontag, saul bellow and even charlie chaplan and al capone make appearances. it's creative in a woody allen way, but i still prefer more than one main character with a giant neurosis.
the funniest and yet bothersome part of the movie comes from figuring out why he transforms into these people. mia farrow, as his analyst, discovers it was a defense mechanism from childhood. as a jew he faced a lot of anti-semitism from neighborhood kids and adults. it turns out even his parents blamed him for the anti-semitism. i guess "zelig" is the ultimate expression of assimilation.
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