Borat (15)
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Luenell
Jak sie masz? My name-a Borat. I like you.
I can’t help but smile straight away. When most people say “I like you”, it’s a good thing, when Sacha Baron Cohen says it’s more a case of…”uh-oh”.
And this is what the film opens with, Borat, Kazakhstan’s 2nd most famous reporter with innocence and incompetence introducing himself, his family and his country. After sitting through the first five minutes and learning that our intrepid reporter is about to visit the USA (for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan), the scene is set, and the audience divided. “Borat” has caused controversy (nothing new for it’s creator) on a global scale, you only have to look at this to see how much:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/Borat.pdf
The film starts very much as a “documentary”, but as the film progresses you are drawn more into the story behind the scenes. Although Borat’s intentions are initially “business” orientated, whilst in the USA, he catches an episode of “Baywatch” and falls for the character “CJ”. He later finds out that “CJ” is actually Pamela Anderson, but this makes no difference and our hero makes up his mind that he is going to marry her. There is one slight problem in that Borat is already married, but this is corrected fairly swiftly as Borat soon receives news that his wife has tragically died. For a few milliseconds Borat contemplates what all of this means, packs his bags, and then persuades Azamat, the erstwhile director, to accompany him in a journey across America so that they can learn more about the “culture”.
Within this framework, Sacha sets about his work. Kazakhstan took great exception to this film, but the reality is that the film is very much a swipe at American culture. When we are watching Borat we are all aware that it’s Sacha, and that he is fictitious. The people duped into appearing on camera in the film however, are real Americans, and some of their views and actions are equally real.
Some of the setups were just painful to watch, but you can’t help but sit there and take it in. Full credit to Sacha though, as he has perfected his act as the apparently naive reporter so well, the people he interviews either clam up in shock or worse, they start to reveal their own opinions which were maybe best left unsaid.
The Veteran Feminists of America were on the receiving end of “Borat’s” offensiveness. The “interview” with three of the group and Borat starts off plausibly but then derails when he refers to his wife's farm work ("she pulls the plough"), women walking three steps behind men ("it used to be 10 steps, my country is advancing") and then, for no apparent reason, starts asking how to contact Pamela Anderson. Then, if matters couldn’t get any worse, the meeting gets decidedly personal when Borat keeps referring to one of the women as a man. Behind the scenes, and what isn’t shown, is that the leader of the group had asked for Borat to be thrown out after he had suggested that women’s brains were smaller then men’s.
After watching the film, think about this, which group of people were the most honest and “real”? For me it was the gang of young men on the street who seemed the most accommodating of all to somebody as inept as the Kazakh reporter, whilst some of the personal revelations that came to light from “upstanding members of the community” were quite shocking.
All in all, a very funny film to watch!
