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EYE ON EUROPE |
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BROUHAHA |
 Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat, wearing a thong, common beach attire in his native land. |
The Kazakh madman
divides the human race
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
Nothing polarizes people like far-out comedy and “Borat” is doing it better than most. This film dominates dinner party chitchat from LA to Bordeaux and big papers ranging from the New York Times to Le Monde have published rave reviews. On the downside, one San Francisco critic describes "Borat" as rapidly approaching the intersection of “Overrated and Enough Already” and several lawsuits have been filed by people who were offended.
My own posture on alternative comedy is to follow the humor and forget about matters of taste. This leaves a much wider field for my personal enjoyment. If it’s truly funny, I’ll take it.
I thought Borat’s edgy attitude and spontaneous wit were exciting to watch and I came out of the theatre with my sides aching. Filmmaker Jay Roach, director of mainstream comedies including “Meet the Parents,” has been quoted as calling "Borat" a “true comedic high-wire act” that sets a “new standard for filmed performances." I have a feeling we’re going to get more movies like this.
If you haven’t seen "Borat," remember to keep in mind the comic premise--that this is the story of a naïve, isolated East European making his first trip to the United States. His ride on the New York subway sets the tone when his live chicken escapes from his suitcase. “Be careful--he bite!” Borat yells as he chases the bird down the car. This really happened, and the stoic New Yorkers who thought they had seen everything were bug-eyed.
He then makes his way across the country
to meet Pamela Anderson, who deserves special mention for allowing
herself to be kidnapped in an embroidered sack, a close approximation
of the real Kazakh way of getting oneself a wife.
I saw "Borat" one afternoon with a wildly appreciative
French audience. God only knows what they were actually thinking
but I surmise the loudest laughs had something to do with the
fun-house mirror this movie holds up to American society. Encounters
with stone-faced feminists and right-wing nutlogs served as reminders
of what a funny place the United States can be.
For native English-speakers, Borat’s mangled language added a fresh feel to the dialogue. “I so excite to do my movie,” he enthuses at the beginning. No one since Bill Dana’s “Jose Jimenez” has had so much fun turning the English language inside out.
There was one scare as Borat wrestled naked in a hotel room with his hairy 300-pound companion Azamat, played by Ken Davitian. Le Monde calls this “a scene that would make the best-attached jaws drop.” An elegant woman in the Bordeaux theater climbed over me to head resolutely for the exit. I took her to be the first walker of this showing but, no, she was back in 90 seconds flat adjusting her underwear and muttering “Excusez-moi, excusez-moi” to regain her seat and pick up the story.
Is this really alternative comedy? It is starting to look mainstream. The U.S. public spent $26 million to see it the first weekend of its release in 837 theaters. That was the largest take in movie history for a release in fewer than 1,000 theaters. The following weekend it expanded to 2,400 theaters and now there is no stopping it despite protests from gays, feminists, Jewish organizations and an obscure fraternity at a college in South Carolina.
My favorite objection comes from the fraternity boys who filed suit claiming the producers got them drunk and induced them to sign the usual waivers before catching them on camera talking like idiots. In the suit they offer to give back the $200 they were paid if the movie is removed from all 2,400 theaters. This will leave the judge laughing if it ever gets that far.
An internet poll asks whether the fraternity boys “are lame for suing”? At last count 83 percent said “Yes.”
Another suit comes from Glod, the muddy
Romanian village that served as a backdrop for opening and closing
scenes. The Glods want $30 million for hurt feelings. Their American
lawyer, Edward Fagan, says he intends to win this one and “teach
Hollywood a very expensive lesson.”
Someone has to ask what the fuss is all about. Yes, star performer
Sacha Baron Cohen, a Cambridge-educated and highly praised comedian,
has pushed the boundaries a bit but he has been doing that for
years on British television as the character Ali G. British humor
has always been more carefree than anything the Americans can
muster.
He is far from alone out there:
-- Thirty years ago Dudley Moore and Peter Cook recorded a series of hilarious ad-libbed dialogues, many of which touched upon the unmentionable.
-- Twenty years ago “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” included a scene with Michael Palin fleeing a nunnery as the nuns begged him to spank them. That nailed virginity, feminism, sex, sado-masochism and religion in one blow.
-- A year ago a great laugh arose in the republic at showings of “The Aristocrats,” a film based on a hundred comedians telling the same filthy joke.
-- And “Seinfeld” on network television included episodes built around masturbation, constipation and the handicapped. In one, Kramer crashes an electric wheelchair and his paraplegic ex-girlfriend is last seen barrelling downhill in a second-hand chair while screaming “No brakes!”
It’s hard to set boundaries in a context like this. “Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” is merely going with the flow. Anyway much of what he did is reality-based, including the Pamela Anderson kidnapping scene and the anti-Semitic bits that echo real anti-Semitism in East Europe, not to mention France and Germany.
Other scenes reminded me of my time in East Europe. At lunch in a Moscow restaurant a local once sat beside me and offered me a bite of his fish wrapped in that day’s Pravda. He was disappointed when I passed. Another Russian enjoyed laughing at our concept of freedom, calling it “freedom to piss in the street.” Neither of them tried to kiss me but they could otherwise have been Borat.
Makers of this movie recall that Cohen
stayed in character virtually throughout the shooting, including
at creative sessions. There was no script, only an outline. Cohen
improvised most of the film. As Roach said, he “takes risks
like no other performer I know of.”
Cohen had great fun thumbing his nose at post-Soviet Kazakhstan,
an old-style dictatorship run by President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Although the origins of the story have nothing to do with the
real Kazakhstan, Cohen named his grumpy neighbour “Nursultan.”
Le Monde gave the film its best endorsement, calling it “a satire both furious and precise, wrapped in humor of universal political incorrectness.”
Get ready for sequels and imitations. That’s the Hollywood way.
©2006 by Michael Johnson. The photo from "Borat" is courtesy of The Unofficial Borat Website. This column first posted Dec. 18, 2006.
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