Emotionally exhausting: agony, ecstasy, irony all at once!

Rating: 9/10 (29 November 2006)

I was almost dreading seeing Borat, I knew it would be like emotional extreme sports. It was impressive to watch Sacha Baron Cohen at work, it must have been difficult and demanding to make this film (at least as much as it was for me to watch). It seems like an entirely new genre of film. And, "Borat" definitely captures the spirit of our times with Cohen's poignantly sad-masochistic style of humour and domination of the "quasi realtv" world. Mythic themes for me included the employment of confusion to conquer, the tarot card's fool, and the trickster. Why nobody has beaten Cohen to a pulp yet? Probably he's quick on his feet, but he also manages as Borat to be somewhat naively likable and surprisingly fragile. Overall, not for the faint-hearted, but to my way of thinking, an important film because it challenges. From the first NY scene on the train, you just know you might as well throw all movie rule books out the window and sit back and take it. Genius on some level!