Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
So we have Sunday Sonnets — working on finishing the first, the rest will be single posts, for I’ve learned; Friday Boobies, Saturday Songs, and, now, Monday Movies — reviews.
Thanks to those who sent Lawyers Guns and Money, and enabled my release. You know who you are. I’ll have to be careful partying with my old chum Borat in the future.
This film is emphatically not for children. Not at all. Features brief male nudity, disturbing scenes, and very disturbing dialog.
Whether it’s letting loose live chickens in a New York Subway, trying to kiss men from Brooklyn, or confusing the elevator in his hotel for his room, Sacha Baron Cohen’s bizarre blend of ignorance, naivete, anti-semitism, misogyny, and prejudice are powerful — and powerfully, though cringingly comic — tools in his journey across America.
A sample, as he interviews feminists in New York:
Borat: “In Khazakstan, is illegal for more than 5 women to be in same place except for brothel… So what it means, this feminism?”
Woman: It’s the theory that women should be equal to men [wild laughter from Borat] in matters social… You are laughing, that is a problem.
Borat: Do you think a woman should be educate?
Woman: Definitely.
Borat: But is it not a problem that women have smaller brain than man?
Woman: nearly speechless with anger
Borat: Give me a smile baby, it better for your face.
Woman, manfully summoning up patience: Well what you are saying is very demeaning…[continues]
Borat: (v/o, narrating) “I could not concentrate on what this old man was saying”.
There’s a magnificent bookend to this as he travels across Texas with a group of… I hate to say it, but well, rednecks (NB- I use the term with caution; I think careless use of it is racist). A group of good ‘ol boys who chat with Borat as follows:
Good ol’ Boy: You like the b—-s out there in the f—in old Russia there? … F— the S— out of them! The hos… you never call them again!
Borat: Why you don’t call them, because they don’t have telephone yes?
Man: No because they don’t have respect.
Horrible. Terrible. Sad, yet true.
And the scumbags talk about how minorities have more power, Jews have too much power, and they talk about slavery… “we wish — big shame”.
Jesus wept.
I’ve a lot of contempt for the kind of race-baiting that a few Democrats engage in. I despise the bigotry of some on the left.
Yet a bunch of these guys are conservatives. Disgusting. Contemptible. Repulsive. I laugh at their antics, but I’m not happy.
Stitched together from hours of outtakes of Americans reacting to Borat, combined with scripted scenes (with an added character; his producer) and a narrative voice-over that describes the loose plot of Borat’s journey to find Pamela Lee Anderson of Baywatch fame, it works incredibly well. It’s one of the most successful adaptations of a TV comic character to the big screen in decades. The Ali G movie was crap; this isn’t.
However deft the stylings of Baron Cohen [he does not hyphenate his surname, unlike his second cousin, Trinity college fellow Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of psychopathology at Cambridge, and author of some renowned works on autism, including some fascinating studies of gender and autism], one certainly winces at times. It’s emphatically not a film for children.
If you’re a small-screen fan of Borat, this is probably worth seeing in the theatre with friends. If you’re not, but enjoy South Park and the like, this is worth a look. If you’re neither, but have a good sense of humor, it’s probably worth renting down the road, if you’re planning on consuming some alcohol.
Rating:
8/10.
-wolfe