Peculiarly one of the most heavily-touted yet unknown movies (up until release anyway) seen this year, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (to be known from now on as Borat) was discussed, analysed, mocked, seen as the savior of comedy and as its end, and generally given the kind of treatment Orson Welles or Alfred Hitchcock films have received in the past. Despite this (seemingly) wall-to-wall attention it was released on a third of the screens normally booked for a major motion picture, yet still wound up making an excellent $26.5 million. I guess the critics were right and the fears of studio heads about Middle America were wrong. So far anyway.
Borat is a comedy, a very unique comedy which utilizes the part-real, part-scripted documentary-style of filmmaking so beloved of British comedians of late. While I doubt this genre�s ability to maintain a consistent level of quality, the likes of Ricky Gervais and Chris Langham have certainly hacked out a substantial vein of comedic originality in which the likes of Cohen can flourish. Like his previous character Ali G, Cohen�s Borat is a bumbling and ridiculous caricature set loose among normal people in the real world. Where Ali G was able to interview important people and make fun of their naivet� in dealing with the young, Borat uses people�s ignorance of foreign countries in order to gain embarrassing insights into their own stupidity and xenophobia.
While the level of reality to scripting is debatable, it is clear that a large amount of Borat is �live� and that the people caught on camera are real and expressing their true opinions and beliefs. Due to the apparent believability of a Kazakhstani TV host traveling through America and recording it for his countrymen, many people are far more honest and forthright than they would be to a Western news crew. As such you get to witness 3 drunken frat boys raging against minorities, a preacher stating unequivocally that he did not descend from a monkey, and an old rodeo hand suggesting that we should annihilate all Islamic peoples. In and of itself it is fascinating stuff, but Cohen�s fearless genius for comedy raises Borat above your standard �laugh at them there rednecks� fare.
I don�t want to spoil any of the best scenes but let me just say that there are an awful lot of them. Laughing at the cinema has almost become an endangered art, so bereft are many modern-day comedies of even a few chuckles. Wry, knowing smiles are one thing, but what you most seek in any laughfest is precisely that: big, fat belly-laughs. The kind that have you holding your sides and trying not to fall off your seat. Borat has them to spare. From the brilliant introduction of his hometown and family, through his cheering of �the American war of terror� at the rodeo, on to his hysterical and shocking naked fight with his producer (Ken Davitian, also naked. And obese) which culminates in them gatecrashing a mortgage brokers convention with a dildo, this is one long reason to laugh till you cry.
Borat�s genius is not just in getting you to laugh though, it is getting you to giggle at things you wouldn�t ordinarily laugh at. The occasional crack at black people or the mentally retarded was met by slightly more muted amusement, but it was there nonetheless. This is because Borat�s humour comes not from laughing AT them, but from Borat�s ignorance (and the ignorance of his interviewees) in what would otherwise be regarded as a conventional setting. At its most base level, this is a film about a man who goes into places angels fear to tread (and I include the fundamentalist church in that) and stone-facedly mocks them, no matter how threatening they may get. If this is the face of new, cutting-edge comedy, then it�s so sharp it could cut diamonds. |
