|
|
“Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,”
directed by Larry Charles.
20th Century Fox, 2006, 84 minutes.
Road Trip US and A by Andrew Ferguson
It’s a rare comedian who manages to spark an international incident, but then there are few comedians quite like Sacha Baron Cohen. The Brit garnered critical acclaim for “Da Ali G Show,” which brought unwitting semi-prominent public figures into the studio to be interviewed by Ali G, an idiot gangsta wannabe. Freed from the social graces that dampen the interview format, Baron Cohen as Ali G peppers his interview subjects with blunt, bizarre non sequiturs, often outright telling the emperor that he’s naked (first question to the chairman of the Arts Council of England: “Why is everything you fund so crap?”). Faced with seemingly irremediable stupidity, the increasingly frustrated interview subjects often reveal aspects of their personalities that they’d rather keep off camera, particularly the dread -isms: racism, sexism, elitism. | | Andrew Ferguson is managing editor of Liberty. |
| Baron Cohen raises the stakes with “Ali G Show” spinoff character Borat Sagdiyev, an affable, leering television presenter from Kazakhstan, or at least a version of Kazakhstan that boasts of its prostitutes as “the second cleanest in the region,” where towns belabor horned, hook-nosed papier-mâché mascots each year during the “Running of the Jew.” Now, the Kazakh government was none too happy with this and, by way of proving that Kazakhstan is now an enlightened modern country, pulled the plug on Borat’s website (borat.kz, since moved to borat.tv) and threatened to take Baron Cohen to court if he continued his portrayal.
Sued by Kazakhstan? Who could dream of such publicity? But Baron Cohen (who, as you might have guessed from his name, is Jewish) wasn’t about to let them off that easy. Soon after, Borat hosted the MTV Europe Movie Awards, and there vehemently denied any connection between himself and Baron Cohen; in fact, he “fully supported” his government’s decision to “sue that Jew!” After that and other humiliations (e.g., a four-page ad in the New York Times praising the liberality of the country dismissed by Borat as “lying propaganda from assholes Uzbekistan”), the Kazakhs sat on their hands and waited to see how bad they’d catch it in the movie.
They catch it pretty bad, all right — Baron Cohen tweaked their noses by having his fictional Kazakh government commission Borat to make a documentary in “US and A” — but the ones who will be wincing most are the people Borat meets and films on his trip across the country, New York to Los Angeles, by way of the Deep South. He flummoxes a gaggle of feminists, butchers the Star-Spangled Banner in front of a rodeo crowd, crashes a fancy Southern dinner party (held on Secession Lane), and ensures that a group of Midwestern marketers will never forget their convention.
Borat’s antics are hilarious, obscene, and offensive beyond belief (seriously, if right now you’re thinking “It can’t really be that bad,” this is not the movie for you), but Baron Cohen’s improvisatory skill is such that every utterance of his character, no matter how callous or outlandish — he brings with him to America “a jar full of gypsy tears to prevent AIDS” — seems less a product of deliberate cruelty than of innocent cultural misunderstanding.
| | Borat’s antics are hilarious,
obscene, and offensive beyond
belief. If you’re thinking “It
can’t really be that bad,” this
is not the movie for you.
|
| The movie’s oblivious co-stars certainly swallowed the schtick: a few even filed suit once the deception was revealed — though they’d signed waivers allowing footage featuring them to appear in the “documentary.” A pair of misogynist frat boys (parting advice to Borat: “Never! let a woman! define who you are!”) now claim they said what they said, and signed the release, only because the film crew got them drunk first. As the target audience of the “Girls Gone Wild” series (unofficial motto: In vino veritas), you’d think they’d have learned a thing or two about the combination of alcohol, cameras, and binding contracts. Instead, they’re left to ponder the concept of shame for perhaps the first time.
The lawsuit, of course, will only serve to embarrass them further (just ask the Kazakhs) and rack up another testament to Baron Cohen’s greatest comedic gift, one that he shares with Trey Parker and Matt Stone of “South Park”: he forces the world to meet him on his terms. Another example: the scenes in Borat’s hometown were filmed not in Kazakhstan, with its endless steppe, but in a poor mountain village in Romania. The villagers, disputing the movie’s portrayal of them as incestuous Jew-baiting drinkers of horse urine, are gathering together their meager livelihoods so they too can sue Baron Cohen — prompting this remark from a local official: “They got paid so I am sure they are happy. These gypsies will even kill their own father for money.”
Exactly the sort of comment Borat would make, or maneuver someone else into making. Truth is funnier than fiction.
Which actually points to the movie’s one failing: though it made me laugh as hard as any movie I’ve seen in the theater — up there with “The Big Lebowski,” “Clerks,” and “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” — it doesn’t offer much in the way of replay value. Some will of course watch it hundreds of times: those types who quote reflexively from “Monty Python” or “The Simpsons” will find plenty of catchphrase fodder and visual gags (there’s a lovely Abbott and Costello tribute) to keep them obsessed. But Baron Cohen isn’t the type to wait around for a second viewing: there are awards shows to host, interviewers to bamboozle, governments to humiliate.
“Borat” is excellent as a provocation, but with all due respect to the stone-faced crew that made it believable, it’s ultimately no more than a temporary receptacle for a creation of true genius: the character of Borat Sagdiyev, Kazakh provocateur.
| | | |
