The Couch Potato’s Guide to Hard Times

Film Review of Borat Subsequent MovieFilm

By Geoff Carter

Historically, during times of hardship and duress, people have tended to look to movies as vehicles for escape and diversion. Musicals like 42^nd Street and Dancing Down to Rio and Busby Berklee’s dance extravaganzas were quite popular with audiences during the Great Depression. While The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, as well as comedies like My Man Godfrey and Duck Soup, also took moviegoers’ minds off their troubles during that time, a number of other movies addressed social issues—sometimes obliquely—brought about by the economic hardships. Audiences, expressing their anger at the establishment, often cheered on the gangsters in films like Little Caesar and White Heat. Gold Diggers of 1933 did not shirk at depicting the hard lives of chorus girls and citizenry in general.

Today, after enduring the terrible toll wrought by the COVID pandemic—the deaths, the lingering symptoms, the economic fallout, and the months of forced isolation in quarantine—we would expect the movies, television, and other streaming devices to concentrate on escapist entertainment. And we wouldn’t be disappointed. While some films like Black Widow, Dune, and Mortal Kombat suffered delayed released, other fantasy-based films like Wonder Woman 1984and Tom and Jerry were released digitally and did quite well. All these films (excepting Dune) are based on either comic books or video games. You can’t get more escapist than that.

And then of course we also have the dozens of other zombie and dragon series, superhero sagas, or adolescent comedies to choose from. And why not? This past year has been tough; we need a little diversion. Yet, oddly, some movies in the past year have not looked away from the tough issues confronting us. These films have—in fact—not only stared reality in the face, they’ve folded it into their cinematic worlds. 

Nomadland is a film of contrasts, austere and beautiful, that follows a group of mostly older citizens scrabbling to make a living by driving from job to job across the American West. Based on the non-fiction bestseller by Jessica Bruder, the film is based on experiences of real-life working transients traveling to survive. Although the lead character, Frances McDormand’s Fern, is fictionalized, some members of the supporting cast are actual nomads, relating their own life experiences in the fictionalized context of the film. 

Bob Wells, the self-appointed patriarch and guru of the nomads, appears in the film, and talks touchingly to Fern about his lost son. Fern’s traveling buddy Linda May speaks of the sights she’s seen and the things she’s done and the regrets she does not have. Director Chloe Zhao has woven these real-life experiences into a larger tapestry of human courage and awe-inspiring landscape. Reality blends almost seamlessly with fiction. 

Then we have Sacha Baron Cohen’s head-scratching blending of reality, fiction, comedy, and performance art called Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Cohen has made a career out of creating off-beat satirical characters ranging from hip-hop wannabe Ali G, fashion reporter Bruno Gehard, and political operative Borat Sagdiyev. Cohen typically uses these characters to ambush unsuspecting non-actors during his productions, not letting them in on the joke that he is actually playing a character. 

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm begins as Borat is released from his lengthy prison sentence in his native country Kazakhstan to complete a mission, delivering a gift of the famous “Johnny the Monkey” to President Trump in order to redeem the reputation of his nation. Before leaving, Borat discovers he has a fifteen-year-old daughter, Tutar, (Maria Bakalova) whom he refuses to acknowledge. Upon arriving in America (after a circuitous route) Borat discovers Tutar has stowed away and eaten Johnny.  Borat then decides to give Tutar—instead of Johnny—to Mike Pence. 

Along the way, to communicate with his premier, Borat works with an unassuming real-life fax operator. Borat gives Tutar a makeover and then they attend a genuine debutante’s ball, once again without letting the debs and their dads in on the joke. The plot of the film is cobbled together with real-life events such as Pence speaking at a local CPAC event, and Borat—disguised as a Jew—speaking to real-life Holocaust survivors at a synagogue. But the crowning moment is when Tutar, as a newly liberated Western woman (and somehow suddenly a journalist) interviews an unsuspecting Rudy Giuliani. To say the least, Rudy’s behavior is rude, nearly bordering on criminal. Borat ultimately realizes he loves his daughter and they return to Kazakhstan together, where he faces certain death for his failure to redeem his nation in Trump’s eyes. The film’s surprising conclusion is rather neatly done and resonates with surprising political acuity.

So where does this Frankenstein of a movie fit in during the pandemic and quarantine? Is it escapism? The film is at times certainly funny, but its humor is not exactly escapist. Cohen uses Borat’s encounters with real citizens like scalpels to expose the hypocrisies of American society. His technique of ambushing real people in faked situations does not make for comfortable viewing. Watching Borat and his daughter dance at the debutante ball is actually harrowing. 

Yet the film is ultimately sweet and satisfying. Borat’s acknowledgement of his love for his daughter is unexpectedly touching and the ending belies the somewhat chaotic nature of the film up to that point, tying up a number of loose threads. 

Cohen, whose work in The Trial of the Chicago 7, Sweeney Todd, and Les Misérables more than validates his work as an actor—and a triple threat—but his true genius lies in his unrelenting quest to ferret out hypocrisy, lies, and duplicity. 

During this past year, we’ve dealt with an incredible amount of lies, greed, and selfishness from our leaders. While it would be easy to look away from these transgressions and get absorbed in the newest incarnation of the Marvel Universe, Cohen has done what needs to be done. He made us look at something we need to see. And that we do need to remember. 

Featured image Borat-in-Cologne.jpg by Michael Bulcik. User Skssoft on de.wikipedia; Michael Bulcik / SKS Soft GmbH Düsseldorf, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons