BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN (R) ****

 

Directed by Larry Charles. 84 minutes.

Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian and Pamela Anderson. Released by Twentieth Century Fox.

 

Sacha Baron Cohen is one of the riskiest, most intelligent American comedians to come around in the past twenty years and his second feature film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is one of the most explosively funny, thoughtful and combative comedies ever made, joining the ranks of South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut and even Dr. Strangelove. Sadly, there is no film in recent years that comes close to portraying where we – the U.S. – are as a nation as Borat. It often takes a foreigner to best point out our cultural flaws when we ourselves are afraid to expose our darker beliefs and behaviors. Cohen, who delves into the persona of Borat Sagdiyev so deeply and fearlessly, is not only amazing at how far he will go to prove a point or finish a joke, but unbelievable in how he gets random people to instill trust in him as he waves his camera in their face on Da Ali G Show and in this movie.

 

Within minutes of meeting Borat in this film, a gun dealer tells Cohen which gun is best for shooting Jews, a group of South Carolina frat boys admit that they would like to see slavery reinstituted in the U.S., a rodeo hand says he thinks homosexuals should be hanged and uses openly racial language about Muslims. If you haven’t seen the show, Borat is a reporter from Kazakhstan who has come to America, usually in the South, to learn about the country and report back to his home country. Of course, the nation of Kazakhstan has repeatedly taken out ads in The New York Times slamming Borat and trying to disassociate themselves from the comedian, which ends up making the joke all the more funny. Cohen is not making fun of Kazakhstan, but showing how stupid most people are and how racist, homophobic, sexist, anti-Semitic, you name it.

 

The film’s plot is paper thin. Borat, who is a homophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist reporter from a small village in Kazakhstan, is on his way to report his findings of America and is accompanied by Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), his heavyset travel companion sent along by the government of Kazakhstan who will provide funding for Borat’s film. But when Borat arrives in America, he sees Pamela Anderson on television, falls in love and decides to travel to California to ask her to be his bride. The film is a road trip, during which Borat travels cross country and meets an assortment of hateful and kind people and gets himself into situations which range from funny to screamingly, stomach-hurting hilarious.

 

It is obvious why Borat travels southbound: not only do people’s prejudices become more and more outrageous as he heads through Georgia, South Carolina and Texas, but also because Cohen is recognized more in East Coast cities than he is in the Bible belt. He travels to shops, rodeos and churches and even arranges meetings with local television news stations and elected members of Congress. Each situation is unique, riotously funny and, often, even poignant. What is amazing is how Cohen plays his character in all seriousness and never cracks a smile, which would, based on the situations he finds himself in, be seemingly impossible. How exactly does Cohen not crack a smile while telling a Congressman eating cheese that the food product derives from the breast milk of Borat’s wife? Or, when he tells a huge crowd at a Southern rodeo that he can’t wait until “Premiere George W. Bush drinks the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq?” Or, especially, during the film’s biggest set piece, as he runs naked after Azamat through a posh hotel, wrestling with him in front of a crowd of hundreds of businessmen?

 

We are able to like Borat because he has an innocence that the people with whom he speaks do not possess. His anti-Semitic beliefs are so over-the-top – Cohen is Jewish himself – and his sexist beliefs are so ridiculous that you can’t possibly take them seriously. Borat also professes distaste for homosexuals, but then does not understand why the men he meets do not want him to kiss them on the cheeks and mouth. Watch a congressman’s face when Borat feigns surprise that the man who planted a rubber fist in his rectum the evening before their meeting was gay.

 

The film has the setup of the Tom Green Show, Jackass or, of course, Cohen’s Da Ali G Show as Borat continually wanders from one situation into the other, provoking people to spew hatred as he makes a complete fool of them. I’m sure people will be taken aback by Cohen’s foul language, bizarre demeanor, lack of social etiquette and pension for displaying his feces in a plastic bag, but the comedian successfully makes us confront our society's ugliest personality traits. There are few comedians who are willing to take their act as far as Cohen does and recent comparisons of the British-born actor to legend Lenny Bruce are not unwarranted. Borat is spectacularly funny, perhaps the funniest movie I have seen in several years, but beneath the in-your-face Tom Green and Jackass-styled sketches is a stinging, witty sociopolitical satire.