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Borat: Cultural Learnings On America For Make Benefit
Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan
Reviewed by Rich Drees
In the Middle Ages, sometimes the only person in a royal court who
could speak the plain, blunt truth was the court jester. Able to
couch his criticism in jokes, the jester could say things that no
one else in the court could, pointing out the foibles of the court
in a manner that would otherwise have been unhealthy for anyone else
to attempt.
If there is a
modern analogue for the court jester it could very well be British
comic Sacha Baron Cohen, whose new film
Borat: Cultural
Learnings On America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan
uses comedy to shine a light on some rather ugly truths about
ourselves that we’d rather not admit. The naive and
sexist Borat is one of three characters created by Cohen for British
television with which he would confront the famous and not-so-famous
in interview situations with questions that range from inappropriate
to down-right bizarre, the results uncomfortable to hilarious.
And now, Borat
has made the leap to the big screen in a film that is as near a
piece of subversive comic genius as has been seen in years. While on
a trip to the United States to find ways to bring his home country
into the 21st century,
Kazakhstani
reporter Borat Sagdiyev abandons his assignment to cross the country
in a dilapidated ice cream truck to meet and hopefully marry Pamela
Anderson. Along the way he interviews a rather humorless humor
coach, sings the
Kazakhstani National anthem at a rodeo and manages to whip
a Pentecostal gathering into a prayerful frenzy.
Although the
film’s plot is a mix of the standard fish-out-of-water and road
movie tropes, it remains only the flimsiest of excuses for his
Candid Camera-like encounters with Americans. But that’s not a
drawback in this case. The meat of the movie is what Cohen manages
to get his interview subjects to reveal about themselves. With just
a precisely worded phrase that only sounds like a malapropism on its
surface, Cohen’s Borat manages to get his on camera subjects to open
up and expose themselves in ways that they might not otherwise do.
The result is the realization that as much as we may believe we have
become a society that has moved away from bigotry, intolerance and
ignorance, it still lurks, weakened perhaps, but always looking for
a way to peek out. But does knowing the film’s conceit spoil one’s
enjoyment? Not in the least. If anything, there’s a certain amount
of perverse glee in the fact that you’re watching people let loose
with comments that they might not ordinarily make in polite
conversation.
Cohen deserves
a lot of recognition not only for his sharp satirical scalpel but
for his instincts as an actor, knowing when to play an unscripted
moment with a sense of emotional honesty. By shading Borat with some
heart, Cohen makes his creation more character than caricature and
helps give the film the added dimension of an unexpected but welcome
emotional arc that has a surprising payoff in the end.
To discuss more
about the film is to rob it of some of its most powerful punches, if
that hasn’t been done so already. It’s better to just sit down in a
darkened theater and allow Borat to take you along on a trip of
discovery about ourselves. |
