Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan [MA]

In the little pre-modern country of Kazakhstan, popular news journalist Borat Sagdiyev is given an assignment to travel to American and learn lessons of American culture that he can bring back to Kazakhstan in an attempt to glorify the country a bit more. With the companionship of his co-worker Azamat, he begins his documentary in New York, but then the assignment takes a turn when he discovers Bay Watch and falls in love with Pamela Anderson. Soon he and Azamat are on the road to California to make Pamela his wife, shooting their documentary and learning lessons on the way. 

I have seen this movie before and didn’t really like it then either. I only watched it a second time because it’s in the ‘The Book’ and, as such, I have to review it. Ah the joys of set-set goals am I right? Adapted from a character on Da Ali G Show, Borat is actually a really clever mockumentary in all the things is manages to achieve. I just can’t bring myself to find cultural displacement, diaspora, and general disenfranchisement funny at all. Whilst there are some tender and sweet parts in this film, ultimately it’s 80 minutes of racism, bigotry, inappropriate sexual discussion, and other such forms of crude comedy. The story is simple, the schadenfreude level is taken to the extreme so that it just becomes really uncomfortable (for me anyway, I’m not speaking for everyone else), and whilst there is this level of cleverness to the whole thing, it somehow becomes buried by the outrageous bouts of comedy that cross too many thresholds for my liking. 

In the little pre-modern country of Kazakhstan, popular news journalist Borat Sagdiyev is given an assignment to travel to American and learn lessons of American culture that he can bring back to Kazakhstan in an attempt to glorify the country a bit more. With the companionship of his co-worker Azamat, he begins his documentary in New York, but then the assignment takes a turn when he discovers Bay Watch and falls in love with Pamela Anderson. Soon he and Azamat are on the road to California to make Pamela his wife, shooting their documentary and learning lessons on the way. 

The cleverness of this movie comes in the mockumentary form and the character of Borat himself. Part loveable and innocent tourist, part freaky itinerant with no sense of personal space, Borat is the perfect rube and buffoon. As a result of this characterisation, the film turns into a comment and exploration into the ‘real’ attitudes of America: whilst notions of America as a modern and accepting country are globally promoted, this movie and Borat’s interactions with regular Americans exposes them to be foolish, some with pre-modern ideas, and hate-mongers as they presume their superiority over the tourist. Borat’s cultural displacement serves as a springboard from which Americans automatically assume a superior veneer and patronising or aggressive tone when they interact with him and it’s through this that their ‘true colours’ are revealed. I’ll admit that the film is very clever indeed in that it achieves this; it’s a very good example of simple and clever writing and how genre, setting, and other characters can manipulate characters. 

At the end of the day however, the outrageous and sometimes unstomachable comedy takes the driver’s seat and the cleverness of the movie is given little breathing space to lift to the surface. Amongst the film’s more disturbing and dishearteningly memorable scenes are Borat and Azamat wrestling naked, a bag of shit bring brought to the table of a fine dinner party, and various discussions about homosexuals being exterminated, the need for slavery, and women being inferior to men. It’s not my style of comedy at all. 

Starring Sasha Baron Coen, Ken Davitian, and Luenell, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is a clever but really crude movie filled with live bears, schadenfreude, drama, education, romance, and comedy. I appreciate what Baron Coen does and I applaud him for doing so because not many people have the balls to do it, but I just can’t bring myself to find joy in movies like this.