Borat: Offended? Shocked? Good.

Before any of my family had seen Borat, before Sacha Baron Cohen's ass had graced our television display (making us grateful we hadn't seen it on the big screen of a theater), there were several heated discussions about how "morally responsible" the film was, if or if not the film's dialouge was racist, and what it said about America that we had fully embraced Sacha Baron Cohen and Borat. They were involved discussions, with my father (and usually my mother) taking the side of many middle-aged parents, arguing about the film's ability to be easily misunderstood and the implied carelessness with which the film's message was conveyed. I took the side of Cohen and the legions of American fans cheering about his movie, saying that my parents weren't giving the viewers enough credit, that the film did, in fact, unearth hidden hypocrisy and bigotry in mainstream American society. But in hindsight, we weren't arguing about "ethical responibility" and "immoral carelessness," we were arguing about how we could reconcile Borat with our narrow, American idea of what political comedy should be: we were assigning the film a PC value, something that of course seems rediculous now as we hadn't even seen the film at the time. And I think many were guilty of this of this politically-correct mentality: my parents, critics, but, most of all, me. I didn't use these flash judgments to discredit or argue against the movie, but I did use them to pigeon-hole it, to clump it in a group with the pretentious, self indulgent (read: masturbatory) liberal cinema that is always trying to paint a frightening picture of America and American imperialism, but always fails miserably, creating movies that exist only to preach to the latte-drinking choir.

Borat doesn't try to do anything exept create a wonderfully hilarious movie with political undertones. It portrays a startling and terrifying picture of America simply by being there and observing the racist, misogynistic, heterosexist mentality of American culture. Cohen didn't write a script to show the worst in America, he just showed the worst in America; he discovered people who would good-naturedly admit to the desire to hang all homosexuals, college students who would proudly and laughingly describe the extent of their misogyny ("We f__k 'em here, f__ck 'em hard. And then we never call....They don't have my respect, that's why!"), and crowds that will cheer when Borat announces a desire to see "George Bush drink the blood of every Iraqi man, woman, and child". In fact, it almost seems hard to believe that it was Khasiktstan and not the U.S threatening to sue Cohen; we are the ones who should really be embarrassed.

Another thing that was discussed at great length during our household discussions was how funny and (here it comes again) "responsible" what we dubbed "humor of humiliation" truly was. We wondered about the humor in leading everyday people to humiliate themselves in front of a camera, and we wondered about the cruelty of Sacha Baron Cohen in doing so. Well wow, should we have waited until we'd seen the movie! Cohen (as Borat, of course) doesn't in fact humiliate people. Quite the contrary, in fact. He humiliates himself so as to see how other people react. He, after all, is the one who brings a trash bag of his own shit to a fancy southern dinner, he is the one that wrestles (flinch) naked with his grossly obese producer and then runs completely naked into an elevator and from there into a dinner party, and he, after all, is the one that seems close to tears when he is brutally booed off of the lawn by patriotic sports-fans when singing Khasikstan's national anthem (completely made up, by the way) at a rodeo. In fact, for most of the time, Borat simply stands around and talks (that statement is particularly appropriate if you have seen the films Borat-in-a-television-interview scene), often hilariously, with average people, begging then to spill their bigotry into his camera's lens. These people humiliate themselves, plain and simple. They don't need the help.
(The picture is of Ali G, one
of Cohen's past
characters. I know he's
not Borat, but I liked
the image.)

So are you offended by Borat? Are you shocked? You should be. It's a shocking movie. If you're not offended, you must be American.

(And now cue my fake Borat voice): M' name a' Jonah. A' hope y' enjoy m' blog. Ba'ba!

Martin Scorsese: The Departed

I think we can all agree that Martin Scorsese is responsible for three of the best gang films of all time. After explorations into the genre with 1972's Boxcar Bertha and 1973's tragically unrecognized Mean Streets, he released his first truly great crime masterpiece in 1990 with Goodfellas, the violent, profane portrait of mob informer Henry Hill. And after further explorations into his motifs of guilt/redemption and mock-machismo in films like the hyper-violent Casino (1995) and almost amusing Bringing Out the Dead (1999), he released 2000's Gangs of New York, a high-budget, high-risk film about Civil War era New York and the gang violence occurring in the Five Points. And now we have The Departed, a modern gang masterpiece chronicling the rise and fall of (fictional) Irish mob boss Jack Costello.

The Departed opens with Jack Nicholson (brilliant in the role of the deranged Costello) explaining, in a think Boston accent, his mantra to the audience. "Nobody's ever gonna give it to ya. You have to take it." And it is this philosophy, this belief, that the film follows to the letter. The film follows the story of two "rats", one of whom (Matt Damon) is a protege of Costello that has infiltrated the State Police Special Investigations Unit, and the other of whom (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a ex-police cadet and undercover agent raised poor and desperate in Boston who rises in the ranks of the local mob. On the surface, the stories are strictly parallel-- opposite stories of good and evil. But it is more complex than that. As we watch DiCaprio savagely beat and mutilate "Mafia guineas" from Rhode Island while at the same time observing Damon meeting his future finance, the lines between good and evil, law and crime, become blurred, until what the film is left with is a wonderful tension, a sense of overwhelming desperation that slowly overcomes both the characters of Damon and DiCaprio, until it ceases to matter what is right or what is wrong. It only matters that they survive.

As the film progresses, the stories of the two characters become more intertwined and less parallel. Damon's finance becomes first DiCaprio's shrink and then his lover, DiCaprio's only contact at police headquarters becomes an obstacle to Damon's work inside the organization, and finally, it becomes clear that they are really hunting each other. DiCaprio is assigned to find the rat in the Special Investigations Unit and Damon is assigned to find the rat in Jack Costello's crew. As the scenes become more climactic and the sets darker and more menacing, one profoundly frightening thing becomes clear. The two charecters are, in essence, searching for themselves. Just on opposite ends of the scale.

Tension is everywhere in this film. Whether during a profoundly terrifying scene in which mob-boss Nicholson confronts DiCaprio about the suspected informer or during Damon's first date with his finance, the sense of tension is beautifully conveyed in the the gifted camera work, in the screenplay, and in the actors' inspired portrayals of their characters. And it is this, this terrifying tension that sucks a viewer in until they feel the fear of the characters on screen. And it is this, this expression of pure, animal fear, that makes a gang movie. Not car chases, not gun-fights, not scenes of drug use and debauchery, but the subtle, constant feeling of fear. And in this, the film succeeds.