Oscar Flashback - Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)

Next on my Netflix queue was Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, for which Sacha Baron Cohen, Peter Baynham, Anthony Hines, Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips were nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar (film year, 2006; awarding year, 2007). The other nominees in this category were:

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Departed (Winner) *

Children of Men *
Little Children
Notes on a Scandal *

This film also represents the fourth of four comedies topping my Netflix queue, just in case you were keeping track. This film further represents the first of two Oscar-nominated films from the year 2006 that top the queue as well.

Borat came to my attention (and, thusly, my Netflix queue) for two primary reasons. First, it was nominated for an Academy Award, and I do like to follow those darn Oscars, for better or for apparently worse. Second, this film proved a magnet for so much controversy, it was hard not to want to see what all the fuss was about - not unlike a political sex scandal. Plus, Eminem liked the film, and if Eminem likes a film, you know it must be something special. Apparently, he could relate to the whole controversy angle. In any event, I never watched Da Ali G Show, the television program from which the Borat character originated, because my affiliation with HBO (on which the show was broadcast in the US) has been sporadic at best, so the film represented my introduction to this character - and what an introduction it was.

Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen) is an allegedly popular Kazakhstan television personality who has been requested by the fictitious Kazakh Ministry of Information to travel to the "Greatest Country in the World...the US and A" to make a documentary film about American customs and culture. Borat starts his film with his departure from his village and colorful characters including his wife, "the town rapist," "the town mechanic and abortionist," and so on. With his producer, Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), and his pet chicken in tow (the chicken is stowed away in his suitcase), he arrives in New York City, where he attempts to interview people on the streets. Between his own, alleged "cultural" behaviors and the general perception (though not much of a stretch) that he is a clueless foreigner with wildly inappropriate opinions, one might imagine how well Borat goes over in the Big Apple. Soon, however, Borat is introduced to the television program Baywatch while in his hotel room and the, ahem, assets of Pamela Anderson, with whom he instantly falls in love. He decides, against the fervent protests of his producer, to travel across country to find Pamela and to make her his bride, once he learns from a group of offended feminists interviewed by Borat that Ms. Anderson resides in California. The film then follows Borat's trials and tribulations during his cross-country road trip in a used ice cream truck, as he continues his documentary film in various dicey American locations, such as a Southern rodeo, an unidentified inner city, the home bed and breakfast of an elderly Jewish couple (and, apparently, Jews are very scary to Borat and friends), a gay pride parade, and an aristocratic dinner party in the South, to which Borat brings his new friend and flirtation, an African-American prostitute named Luenell. Borat's quest, however, is challenged when he realizes that Azamat, who has found the Baywatch book Borat purchased at a random yard sale, also happens to appreciate, ahem, Ms. Anderson's assets, leading to several interruptions in Borat's journey.

Borat is a strange film based upon a strange character and a truckload of innovative if entirely risqué comedic premises that walk an extremely fine line between reluctantly hilarious and outright offensive. Cohen, who created this character and others like him, and who pioneered the idea of having the over-the-top Borat interact with unsuspecting interviewees, has claimed that Borat's obvious ignorance and prejudices are meant to make the jaw-dropping interview situations comfortable for their subjects, allowing them to expose their own prejudices freely in the face of someone so obviously beyond correction himself. Cohen, therefore, justified his character and his comedic stunts upon some higher purpose in defense of accusations that Borat is sexist, homophobic, potentially racist, and antisemitic; Borat is a mirror, he claimed, satirizing those same attitudes in the audience who would interact with him and who would watch him for what is supposed to be entertainment. This justification is problematic on many levels.

Viewing Borat in a purely unfiltered, unbiased manner, there are some truly clever conceits that inspire chuckles, and some of the plot devices utilized in the film are no doubt what garnered Oscar's attention in the Adapted Screenplay category. To have Borat believe that he could land Pamela Anderson as his wife and to make this belief the catalyst of his quest to travel the roads of the United States in a worse-for-wear ice cream truck, with the company of his producer, his chicken, and, eventually, his bear, is truly brilliant. What's even more brilliant is that Ms. Anderson appeared as herself, and the culminating, clandestine meeting of the two personae is one of the funniest parts of the film. The sequence of events that transpire after Azamat separates from Borat following a completely nude brawl beginning with Azamat's, ahem, appreciation of, ahem, Ms. Anderson's assets, is wickedly funny, beginning with Borat's eye-opening ride with a band of fraternity brothers in a RV and ending with a visit to a United Pentecostal camp meeting. Also, some of the smaller details are quietly hilarious, such as Borat's version of the Kazakh national anthem and the convoluted uses of verbal and written languages that have absolutely nothing to do with Kazakhstan but are employed to invoke a flavor of central Eurasia all the same.

The problem, though, is that, however innovative and creative it may be to trick feminists, Southern aristocrats, Jewish house hosts, and the myriad of other groups exemplified by their stereotypes into exhibiting stereotypical behavior, such an exercise really stops being funny almost too quickly, as such comedy is ultimately more alienating than affecting. It was horrifying to watch Borat and Azamat have insane reactions to alleged local legends about "the Jews" during their brief stay with the kindly elderly couple, including ridiculous exaggerations that seem to make light of decades of discrimination, even if Cohen himself is Jewish. Borat's conversation with the congressman about his chance encounter with some participants in the gay pride parade, including the use of a rubber fist, also became equally cringe-worthy and took a decidedly shocking turn for the worst. All throughout the film, Borat's modus operandi is to spout his perceptions of such groups, and then, sometimes, to inspire his interviewees to react in kind. The entire purpose is to elicit the "shock factor;" I guess I would have laughed harder if I didn't already know that these kinds of attitudes persisted - I mean, the shock value is diminished if one already acknowledges these prejudices exist, but it is another story entirely to have to watch them unfold on screen, whether through the eyes of a madcap caricature or not. In addition, not everyone watching this film is going to intellectually parse out, with reason and logic, that Cohen is poking fun at the same attitudes in his subjects, so it just seems irresponsible, though, I suppose, someone is going to find it hilarious all the same.

Also, some of the actual jokes and scenes that did not involve any particular "isms" just weren't funny. Masturbation on the part of Borat and Azamat was a running gag, with emphasis on "gag." The scene in the southern mansion at dinner, wherein Borat did not know how to use the toilet (including knowing to leave his byproducts in the commode for the flusher) grew extremely tedious because, first of all, a WASP home is a rather easy and unimaginative target, and second, Cohen/Borat was clearly in overdrive, and his quest to get ejected from this home was ham-fisted and, therefore, too obvious to be funny. The chicken joke was chuckle-worthy the first couple of times but lost its luster upon too many returns to it. The naked brawl itself, with its painfully transparent homo-erotic undertones, was merely an R-rated, all nude ripoff of the Saturday Night Live animated series, The Ambiguously Gay Duo, and was, therefore, massively unoriginal and borderline hackneyed. Unfortunately, the clever, innovative, and giggle-inspiring elements in Borat were matched, pound for pound and almost equally, by the inane, recycled, and cringe-inducing elements.

So, Borat, it seems, will either seem funny, or it won't, to most people who view it. It appears to be almost impossible to find a grayer shade of hilarity in this film because its comedic conceits are as polarizing as they are challenging, fresh, and new. For that reason, I find it easy to rate Borat a 6.5 on the patented ratings scale between cute but mediocre and shaky but entertaining. This film alights on more than shaky ground with its bold but risky premise that almost does not quite succeed, rendering the film slightly better than mediocre, and it is entertaining to a degree, but not so entertaining that it passes the test nor do I feel I can, in good conscience, recommend the film. I laughed on occasion, but, ultimately, I don't buy Cohen's artistic vision here. I'm all for facing my prejudices (I do it every day as a civil rights worker), but here, it just stops being funny. Also, as a footnote, I think The Departed deserved to win the Adapted Screenplay Oscar because a few funny situations with an innovative comedic presentation are no match for a tight and twisty story about mob life (or for any other screenplay in the category).