Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
November 5, 2006
Me going to see this film was pretty much a given. Sacha Baron Cohen has been pumping out great comedy for many years – I first saw his work in 2001 when I was visiting some friends in the old country, and they showed me some cool videos of this Ali G guy. The interview with the Beckhams was priceless. It was a surprise to me that HBO picked him up to do a series in the US – normally British comedy does not survive the trip over the Atlantic intact – but the HBO series was very well done.
The plot is seemingly simple – Borat is hired to go to the USA, and make learnings while doing interviews that will help Kazakhstan become a better country. First he does a tour of his village and home (something that you will be familiar with if you have watched a lot of Borat’s work. Unsurprisingly, it does not follow canon – his wife is different and he has only one. Yes I am a nerd for pointing that out). This is a chance to show how backward everybody in his village is. Then he travels to New York (complete with Cyrillic map) to start his journey. What follows is pretty much like the Borat segments from his show, strung together with a storyline that takes him from place to place. Along the way he decides that Pamela Anderson must be his, and he redefines the journey in an attempt to track her down and marry her.
What follows is a film with barely a dull moment, and it is very funny almost all of the time. I think that some more serious reviews might want to focus on the fact that a lot of the plot seems to be very much like a series of disconnected interviews with some funny filler added in like script spackle. I don’t know how true that this actually is (although I suspect that at least one of the interviews could have been taped for the HBO show, put on the shelf unused, and then pulled out for the film), but I don’t really think that it matters because it came out great. This is not a class project for school, this is meant to entertain me, and it does so very bloody well.
The main supporting character for the film is Borat’s producer, Azamat Bagatov, played extremely well by Ken Davitian. He fits the stereotype that we are expecting extremely well. I do think that the fight between Borat and Azamat in the hotel, sans clothing, went for a fraction longer than it should. It was a great modern twist on the Benny Hill style, but it could do with a smidgen of editing.
The funniest thing about all of Cohen’s characters is actually the reaction of the people that he is talking to. He has an ability to make people really show themselves on the camera in a very deep way, sometimes revealing things to large audiences that the people would regret. There are definitely some moments like this in the film, where he will say very bigoted things and have people agree with him. There is a very serious and non comedic undercurrent to Borat, and this is what it is – showing how even in the United States, primitive attitudes like his are actually alive and well. I don’t think that this is specifically a comment on the US – he made the same observations in his native England, and he could go to any industrialized country and pull the same stunt with success. I think that some people see his anti-semitic comments made as the Borat character as a sign that the film is anti-semitic. This tragic – it is obvious to me that Cohen is using his character to show that anti-jewish sentiment is still out there and very strong amongst some people. Like any problem, racism needs to be acknowledged to be solved and I think that Cohen is trying to do some small part here.
Overall, I highly recommend the film. I cannot with good conscience recommend it for children, though. I saw some kids at the cinema where I saw the film that could not have been older than 12, and the movie earned its ‘R’ rating quite comfortably. I even saw some people leave partway through with their children, seemingly unaware of how crass the film would be (luckily they left before the extended naked wrestling scene between Borat and Azamat). I am not trying to tell anybody how to parent their kids – I just want to help people make informed decisions.
