Borat
Directed by Larry Charles
Written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer
Starring Sacha Baron Cohen
Classification: 14A
Rating: ***
Borat at its best is pure satiric genius, the Swiftian kind that has you busting a gut with laughter even while checking your conscience for implicating flaws. Since satire with sharp teeth is virtually extinct in our age - how do you lampoon the self-lampooning? - the movie can be readily forgiven its occasional lapses into Jackass inanity. Then again, those legions of Jackass inanity fans will surely fall in love with the lapses. Let's just say the result is pretty much a win-win situation. When Borat is good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's box-office gold.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, the title character is the comic invention of the relentlessly brilliant Sacha Baron Cohen, who has created the perfect fifth columnist for his invasive humour. On the safe side of the yuks, Borat Sagdiyev is easy to laugh at. A mustachioed "reporter" from the backwoods of the backwoods that is Kazakhstan, he's a throwback troglodyte - a misogynistic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, Gypsy-fearing primitive. On the dangerous side, however, the laughs catch in our throat, since Borat's brand of primitivism can cut awfully close to the contemporary bone, holding up a mirror to modernity and forcing us to take a hard look at our own knuckle-dragging habits.
Of course, where better to bring this double-agent than to the bifurcated land of America, where the gulf between the simian and the sophisticated yawns so invitingly (or, as our excited traveller claims, "It's the centre of democracy and porn"). But, before the trip begins, the picture pays a quick visit to his native Kazakh village. There, after showing off the pigs and the outhouses and "the town mechanic/abortionist," Borat sets the premise. Thanks to a capital infusion from his government ("Ministry of Information supplement budget by selling uranium to some brown men"), he's going to the "US and A" to shoot a documentary whose purpose can be safely gleaned from the movie's snappy subtitle: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
On with the Learnings, where weird fiction bleeds into weirder fact and where the filmmakers' guerrilla tactics seem as unnerving as they are brave. Baron Cohen stays resolutely in character, right inside the lascivious psyche of a guy who looks like a taller Groucho Marx and speaks in a thick Slavic accent just this side of a drool. So ensconced, he repeatedly thrusts himself into actual situations with actual Americans, leaving director Larry Charles to aim the camera and record the carnage. The mayhem starts in New York with some simple laughs at the rube's expense. Borat washing his face in the hotel toilet. Or his undies in the Central Park lagoon. Or Borat taking his live chicken and his cheek-kissing enthusiasms onto a crowded subway - the jaded Manhattanites tolerate the fowl, but that kissing is a whole other matter.
As the journey broadens out into the country, the humour begins its own darkening trek into satire. Taking full advantage of that fabled American generosity, Borat is often welcomed as a quirky but genuine emissary from the distant Third World. An early highlight sees him invited by a rodeo organizer to join the festivities as an honoured guest, although not before the portly Yank offers the visitor a friendly suggestion about his unfortunately swarthy appearance: "Shave off the mustache so you can look more like an Eye-talian."
Handed the microphone to say a few words, Borat plays to the crowd with a merry, "May US and A kill every single terrorist." Huge applause, which continues when the funny-looking foreigner offers to sing the Kazakh national anthem to the tune of The Star-Spangled Banner. Somehow, as he belts out the proud line "Kazakhstan prostitutes cleanest in the nation," the cheers turn to stunned silence that gives way to cascading boos. Seems that certain jingoistic boasts just don't travel very well.
Sadly, his reflexive anti-Semitism receives a more favourable response. Walking into a firearms store, he bluntly asks, "What is best gun to defend from a Jew?" Without blinking an eye, the proprietor reaches behind the counter and pulls out a gold-plated Magnum.
Elsewhere, though, the high concept goes lowbrow and the black comedy gets broad - Borat bulling his way through a china shop, or testing Southern hospitality with a literal doggie bag of toilet humour, or, in a scene guaranteed to gauge your squeamish threshold, wrestling nude on a motel bed with the obese, hairy and equally naked countryman who doubles as his tag-along producer. Apparently, the two had a disagreement over the virginal status of Pamela Anderson, with a smitten Borat on the side of purity. Such are the perils of primal innocence.
Yes, we're entering Jackass territory here, where solid citizens will laugh uproariously and the rest of us, well, maybe fitfully. Although Baron Cohen's performance is always impeccably consistent, the script, stretched over feature length, shows definite signs of unevenness and wear. But, my, did I mention how it dazzles at best?
In fact, watch for a sequence that's worth the price of 10 admissions. The atavistic Borat, with his wild hair and his racist fears and his silly superstitions, walks into a Pentecostal revival meeting. This is no rustic gathering under a makeshift tent, but a well-heeled assembly in a posh hall. Counted among the faithful are several congressmen and a District Court judge, who, in their business suits and ties, start into worshipping an invisible God, gyrating ecstatically with their fellow believers and speaking in tongues that jabber for Jesus. A suddenly subdued, palpably confused Borat takes in this bizarre scene and looks astonished. So do we as, like Gulliver in that earlier travelogue, the film neatly spins the telescope, forcing us to peer inwards and wonder: Just who is the stranger here, and where is the strange land?