“Do you even know the meaning of the word demeaning?” an annoyed feminist asks Borat Sagdyiev, a television reporter from Kazakhstan, after he sniggers at her suggestion that women are equal to men. His deadpan reply: ” No.”
Borat, who’s really the elaborate creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (a.k.a. Ali G), examines the limits of American tolerance and values by intentionally courting controversy in what is easily the funniest and smartest movie of the year.
The documentary-style film, sub-titled Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, is a series of unscripted encounters with unwitting Americans who are forced to endure and oftentimes deal with Cohen’s na’vely offensive character.
Held together by a scripted storyline, the comic genius of this film is that Cohen and director Larry Charles are making fun of the culturally backwards Borat and Americans at the same time. It’s this omni-directional offensiveness that gives Cohen the comedic license to make jaw-dropping comments about touchy subjects like mental retardation, 9/11, and the U.S.-led war on terror.
Cohen uses Borat’s apparent ignorance and casual bigotry to dig up hidden truths and reveal contradictions in the values of Western culture. This artistic bravery, coupled with his impeccable knack for comedic timing, produces a constant flow of hilarious, and gut-wrenching situations. Definitely not for the faint of heart, this film pushes the outside of the envelope of what is acceptable for popular consumption, but also functions as a razor-sharp social commentary on our own na’ve assumptions about foreigners.
The film’s scripted plotline finds Borat tapped by the Kazakh government to travel from his remote village of Kusek to New York City, to make a documentary about American customs and values. Once in America, Borat falls in love with Pamela Anderson after seeing an old Baywatch episode on TV. His desire to “make a love explosion on her stomach” prompts Borat to convince his hefty sidekick and producer Azamat (Ken Davitian) to turn the film into a trek to California so he can “take” Pamela as his new wife. So, with a subtle nod to Cervantes, Borat and Azamat (his Sancho Panza) embark in an $800 dollar ice-cream truck on a noble, yet ultimately deluded quest.
As they journey cross-country, Azamat arranges for Borat to interact on camera will all sorts of Americans, who all get pushed well beyond the comfortable limits of societal norms by Cohen’s disguised comedy. It’s in the most intensely awkward moments that the camera makes its truest observations of American culture.
Following in the footsteps of TV comedians Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras) and Larry David (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm), Cohen struts through a veritable minefield of offensive and intensely embarrassing situations that ultimately highlight Western culture’s own latent ignorance and prejudices.
A good example of this is when Borat is booked to sing the national anthem at a rodeo in Roanoke, Virgina. Before singing, he rallies the redneck crowd by announcing that Kazakhstan supports the “war of terror” (note the small, intentional misstatement)-which is actually true in real life. He is met with wild applause from the obviously hawkish audience. After bolstering support for U.S. troops, to more cheers, he continues, his voice full of conviction, “May George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!” Here’s the genius of it: this gets the biggest ovation of all.
In the style of South Park, Cohen isn’t content to reveal the faults of only one social group. Picked up hitchhiking by a Winnebago full of frat boys, Borat gets them to wax nostalgic about the social benefits of slavery and lament how in America “the minorities have the upper hand.”
Borat also lampoons unfriendly New Yorkers, and shows utter bewilderment at an Evangelical Pentecostal revival featuring Republican Congressman Chip Pickering and former Florida Secretary of State Jim Smith screaming at the top of their lungs about “the blood of Christ,” dancing in wild convulsions, spewing absurd gibberish and speaking in tongues. It’s a great moment because Borat, as ridiculous as he is, somehow comes off as less foreign than these raving true-believers.
However, the people who easily bear the fullest brunt of Cohen’s satire are the citizens of Kazakhstan. The poor peasants of Kusek are portrayed as coarse, uneducated and passionately anti-Semitic, yet tolerant of incest, rape and prostitution.
To add to this insult, the scenes in the film that take place in Kazakhstan were actually shot in Romania, and Cohen and Davitian aren’t really speaking Kazakh either. Both actors improvised their non-English lines, speaking a combination of Slavic-sounding gibberish and their respective mother tongues, Hebrew for Cohen (who is devoutly Jewish in real life) and Albanian for Davitian.
Earlier this year the government of Kazakhstan (which has a questionable record on issues pertaining to free speech and democratic practices) removed Cohen’s “Official Borat Homesite” which was registered to a Kazakh domain. Then, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yerzhan Ashykbayev publicly threatened further legal action against Cohen. True to form, Cohen responded to the threat in character as Borat, saying, “In response to Mr. Ashykbayev’s comments, I’d like to state I have no connection with Mr. Cohen and fully support my government’s decision to sue this Jew.”
Cleverly blurring the line between fiction and reality, Cohen has done all his promotion for Borat in character, appearing as Borat on MTV, The Daily Show and even CNN (where he publicly lusted over anchor Paula Zahn).
In addition to timely and telling cultural observances, Borat contains an especially revolting-yet-shockingly-hilarious fight scene which easily trumps the infamous puppet sex montage from Team America: World Police for the title of Most Obscene Film Sequence, Ever.
While Borat is bound to generate as many catch-phrases as the inferior Napoleon Dynamite, let’s hope this film’s character-driven humour isn’t tainted by a similar tidal wave of brainless pop-culture over-exposure.
By the end of the movie it is all too apparent that Cohen actually does know the meaning of the word “demeaning,” and, in fact, understands it so well that he’s able to help us confront our own private prejudices, in an extremely entertaining, and memorable way.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of American for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Directed by Larry Charles
Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian
Rating: VVVVV
