Hilarious movie, in which a Leningrad Cowboy meets Lars von Trier while traveling through America

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2006)

The British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen earns his living performing as one of several zany characters of his own invention that pander to ethnic and national stereotypes. His repertoire includes Ali G, a British junglist musician (an electronic musical style featuring a mix of reggae and hip hop breakbeats); Bruno, a flaming gay Austrian fashion reporter; and Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakhi television reporter, who is the featured character in this crazy movie.
It's a road movie in which this oddball guy from another country makes the rounds of America to film a documentary intended to enrich the culture back home, his encounters here highlighting the quirks and contradictions of American culture, to comic effect. Of course this is far from being a new film conceit. Its ignoble predecessors, in varying shades of humor, include Werner Herzog's 1977 film, "Stroszek"; Aki Kaurismaki's "Leningrad Cowboys Go America" (1989); "Road Scholar" (1993), starring Andrei Codrescu; and the recent "Schultze Gets the Blues" (2003). Mix equal parts of these four films thoroughly and you'd come up with something akin to "Borat," though the latter film is a lot edgier: it's got more attitude than the other four combined. Thinking more about the recipe, to get "Borat" right would probably require that you add in a liberal sprinkling of Lars von Trier's slant on America, as seen in films like "Dancer in the Dark," "Dogville," "Dear Wendy" and "Manderlay." So much for film comparisons.
It's more important for me to report that for fully 85% of the time, this movie just plain rocks with hilarity. I laughed out loud often, not my usual style. In terms of comedic momentum, it does bog down for a while in the second half, though it finishes well. I must also warn you though that the level of humor is unremittingly earthy, full of boyish sexual preoccupations, and also chuck full of racist and misogynistic overtones. It will surely offend many viewers. Borat himself has the sexual temperament of a horny 16 year-old, with judgment and taste to match. In fact he's more like 40, a strapping 6'3" tall, thin and angular. He walks with a shambling, gangly, and at times almost mincing gait. He tries to strike up conversations with men on the street by reaching out to kiss them. He's a guy you notice right off. And probably want to avoid.
The film begins and ends in a small, deeply impoverished, rural Romanian village, Glod (means "mud" in English), standing in for the Kazakhi village that is Borat's hometown. Apparently Cohen, Director Larry Charles and company did not tell the locals how they were planning to use the scenes they shot there, and much later, upon viewing the completed film, a number of the good citizens of Glod were highly displeased, feeling that the film misrepresented, humiliated and slandered them. (See details in the article, "Borat film 'tricked' poor village actors," by Bojan Pancevski and Carmiola Ionescu, Daily Mail, November 11, 2006.) Indeed, the folks of Glod are made in the film to appear seriously anti-Semitic, anti-Romany, incestuous, and generally debased. Apparently some Glodians are planning a lawsuit against the film production company.
The questionable ethics of the filmmakers have even caused a stir here: it was the subject of an op-ed piece in our leading news daily a couple weeks ago. So what are we to do about a very funny movie made in part at the expense of some unsuspecting participants? Well, the associate editor of our newspaper suggested a boycott of the film. Hmmmm. I suppose that, while the farcical nature of the humor - the exaggeration, comic distortion, hyperbole, whatever - in Borat is absolutely clear and obvious to a viewer like me, it might seem like something quite different, more serious and insulting, to a resident of Glod.
Another notion: because of the fragmented, non-sequential fashion in which movies routinely are shot and edited, often even seasoned film actors have little idea what the final product will look like. Directors often prefer not to tell players ahead of time how the details of the story will unfold, how certain scenes, including the actors' own conduct, will be interpreted in the context of final editing. So if the Glodians didn't know how footage would be used, so what? This may seem a cavalier take on the matter. But I cannot, personally, justify putting down or boycotting this wildly funny movie because of the Glodian episode. Maybe Cohen's company should simply acknowledge the hard feelings of the locals and mollify the Glodians with cash. It's all right with me.
With Ken Davitian, enjoyably cast as Azamat Bagatov, Borat's porcine documentary film director, and the likes of former Rep.Bob Barr (R-Georgia), perennial Presidential wannabe Allen Keyes, and Baywatcher star Pamela Anderson as themselves. (In Armenian, Hebrew and English). My grades: 8/10, B+ (Seen on 11/28/06)