2006-11-27

Not so much

Later than most, we finally watched the Borat film over the weekend. Our expectations were mixed, no doubt. On the one hand, we expected a lot of puerile humor and exploitation of naive subjects (but were mostly unworried about any possible sullying of the reputation of Kazakhstan). On the other hand, we were primed by a variety of media accounts presenting the oft-disguised Mr Cohen as a guerrilla comic who exposes the dark side of American life by appearing to be foolish enough to share the prejudices of his interlocutors. At the same time, saddled by disappointing experience, we arrived with the awareness that efforts to inflate characters developed for sketch comedy to the scale of the large screen usually fail.

The end result, comparing the actual viewing experience to our expectations, is that the film has a little of all that and not enough of any of it. What is disgusting is often amusing, if you like that sort of thing, but not overwhelmingly or hilariously so. What is exploitative is apparent, but not mean enough that anybody seeing it would actually care. As for the biting political satire, well, Borat unearths the surprising fact that racism exists, but there is nothing there that anybody did not already know. He has a couple of interviews with minor ex-politicians, but uses only a few seconds of footage from each; these interviews must not have gone well. In sum, what comes across on film is a bit smarter than, say, Candid Camera, but neither as revealing nor as feeling as Tito po drugi put među Srbima. There are a few moments that stand out from the howling pack of moments: most of these involve people indulging Borat for reasons unknown, but the rapidly shifting response of a rodeo audience to his rants is truly scary, and a group of drunken fratboys is distressingly recognizable.

We left the screening thinking of ways in which somebody with a similar idea might produce a truly impressive film. It would probably not be a popular hit, then. If the producers made a "making-of" documentary parallel with the film, though, that might be really fascinating. As it turned out, I walked into the theatre thinking I would disagree with Darko, but walked out agreeing.

5 comments:

Ali da Hodza said...

We had a similar experience of the film, but what made it even harder to take was the way the film re-purposed beautiful music by Goran Bregovic, much of it from 'Time of the Gypsies' (ironically, given the gypsy sketch) to become, by implication, "Kazakh" folk music. It was most disconcerting to think that some most fave tracks on my iPod would be heard by film-makers as backward folk music.

Eric Gordy said...

Catherine has some observations and suggestions regaring the music in the film....

http://illyriangazette.blogspot.com/2006/11/oh-no-not-more-borat.html

Bg anon said...

I'm not sure about this yet.

I watched a lot of Ali G - very clever and funny stuff and he has incorporated it into Borat.

He has a gay Austrian character which is set to be the next world hit.

But my cynicometer bell is starting to ring. Perhaps its un pc to state a fact but I will, Cohen is upper middle class practicing jew. I'm just starting to wonder about his choice of characters...

Still, I did find Borat funny although a friend of mine says that Cohen's Borat appeals to the base part of human nature.

Eric Gordy said...

There may be a little of the snob thing in terms of who he chooses to ridicule. It seems like Cohen does not give many interviews talking about his purposes or motivations, which may be understandable but is a little bit of a shame too.

Anonymous said...

Eric,
I really appreciate your not liking the film. Teenagers were starting to treat me like Scrooge and Bah! Humbug! is not the quaint words being used. It was reassuring to see sentinent beings feeling the same.
If there was a way to get a refund, I'd be queuing up.