"That would not be funny in America, OK?"

Rating: 7/10 (26 September 2018)

Much water has passed under the bridge since "Borat" was released: America elected its first black president, before going on to reject his would-be heir in 2016 for somebody else...; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have somewhat thawed, with fighting giving way to elections, international cricket teams and would-be Islamic States. The economic situation tanked, social media exploded and the lines between men and women were greyed. Sacha Baron Cohen himself moved on to other characters in other productions - one of which, 2018's "Who is America?", even had its title double up as it hypothesis.
Interestingly, during the closing montage of "Borat", the titular character himself even asks, having undergone a coast-to-coast trek across the United States, the similar question 'What did I learn?' Well, what DID we learn about America at the time of the film's shooting in the summer of 2005?
Viewing it now, and forgetting one or two of the set ups and comedic beats, it is still at least a very funny film: Borat's haggling over the price of a hotel room; his belief that all people in the city of Atlanta speak like those on the poverty line; his interview with a group of feminists; the way the film plays with the long-since established musical cues of "Easy Rider" to reveal a very different method of transportation to that of a Harley-Davidson - each of these make me smile just listing them here.
Baron Cohen plays the eponymous Borat Sagdiyev, whose very beginnings as a character made-flesh, I seem to recall from a documentary on the actor, actually began in the late-1990's as a Moldovan migrant who would walk around London asking people whether they were Cockneys. A few years later, he was the rounded character we all know now playing undercard to Ali G on British television before then making his first foray into America in 2004 with "Ali G in da USAiii". Sagdiyev is a television journalist living in a backwards Kazakh village seemingly characterised by incest; child soldiers; anti-Semitism and technological retardation. The village is a microcosm of the nation itself, so the government have Sagdiyev and his obese producer Azamat (Ken Davitian) traverse to the world-famous New York City to learn about culture and so-forth to try and boost the country's standing - hence the subtitle "Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan". The results are to be shot on film and, it seems, conveyed in this very piece...
What follows is, broadly speaking, a series of incidences consisting of Baron Cohen involving his character with a number of real-life people in a set of curious set-pieces which, I THINK, is trying to get to the bottom of what kind of place America is. To describe the film as a documentary; neo-realist or a piece of Dogme '95 cinema would be misleading, but it borrows heavily from each. Initially, the film takes a noticeably minimalist approach to answering its hypothesis: it depicts Borat, quite literally, greeting people on the train having just landed; unpacking his things in what he thinks is his hotel room in front of a bellboy and then walking around Times Square interacting with passers-by on his first full day.
By chance, a conversation with a panel of feminists ('listen pussycat, smile a bit...') the night after accidentally happening upon a "Baywatch" episode on TV forces him onto the road and to the opposite end of the country to seek out actress Pamela Anderson for marriage. The manner about which the film incorporates Sagdiyev's innocent enquiry into the feminism conversation is both fascinating and hilarious: Who was the blonde on the television last night? Where does she live? Noting down Anderson's locality, one feminist quips 'Oh, he's gonna look her up(!)' Was any of this planned? Did the producers merely have Borat watch TV with the intension of filming Baron-Cohen's reaction, before pushing him off in that direction anyway?
Many of Borat's interactions with an America his trek across to Los Angeles takes him through are cleverly woven into the film in this respect: initially, they refuse to fly and so must drive, and this leads Borat to, firstly, a driving instructor and then a used-car salesman. Later, an interaction with some Jews, Borat's mortal enemy, leads him to a gun store for protection and a terrifying conversation with the staff. In Washington DC, a gay pride rally suddenly becomes part of proceedings. Once on the road, and as the money dwindles and his friendship with Azamat is strained, the adventure turns into a bit of a nightmare...
But what did anybody really "learn"? Writing in Slate Magazine, Christopher Hitchens seemed to think the film, inadvertently or otherwise, more broadly exposed the tremendous tolerance America has of outsiders and how calm and understanding many often are in dealing with outsiders. For this, it was a success. Others lamented as to how it was too keen to attack conservative targets, while a more general gripe seemed to be as to how the film was little more, when all is said and done, but a few candid-camera skits.
Seeing it now, we learn America is a diverse nation split by class and culture: at a rodeo, it is a place of bigotry; in many of its hotels and mansions, it is a place of affluence; in Atlanta, of poverty and potential hostility; at a Jewish run B&B, of immense kindness and whilst on the road with a crew of frat boys, of disturbing sexism. I think ultimately, the film tries to make a correlation between some of America and the village at the beginning - we chuckle at those supposedly living in the stone-age, but the joke is on us when the next 70 minutes reminds us of how some of this stuff is already in the West.