#21: Borat

In which Sacha Baron Cohen introduces America to his alter ego Borat Sagdiyev, a television reporter from a small town in rural Kazakhstan.  To learn about American culture, Borat and his producer Azamat Bagatov travel to New York City, where Borat falls in love with CJ, the beautiful blonde... er... character played by Pamela Anderson on Baywatch.  While Borat pursues Pam Anderson across the country, Cohen plays Borat's 'foreign' quirks off against the bizarre undercurrents of American society.

Probably the best way to view Borat, if like me you tend to be a fairly sensitive and caring individual, is to remember that every single event that occurred in the movie occurred in front of a camera and was as likely to have been staged as any other.  (And most of the 'Kazakh' is actually Hebrew, with a little Polish thrown in every once in a while.)  With that out of the way, one can allow oneself to collapse with laughter at Borat's hilariously crude antics and the terrifyingly bigoted statements he manages to bring forth from the Americans he meets without even trying. Because none of it is real, right?

No, it's true - Borat is uncomfortable and exploitative at several moments, and sometimes ditches its explorations of the darker side of American culture for slapstick gags and gross-out humor.  But what I took away from Borat is that it is viewable on three levels.  First there is 'reality': Cohen's disturbing exposé on American bigotry.  Second, as I mentioned before, in the mental realm where none of it is 'really' 'real', there is the slapstick comedy, with gags and shenanigans and a great deal of sex jokes.  Third... if you're really willing to go the extra mile with suspension of disbelief and take the film at face value, Cohen has ultimately created a film with a coherent storyline, in which the small-town reporter learns some valuable lessons about friendship, kindness, and the meaning of real love.  It's actually almost heartwarming.