Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Released 2nd November 2006, Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan follows Kazakhstani reporter Borat as he travels across the USA to learn about its culture and glory. While this film is an absolute riot as a comedy, for an acquired taste, the film is able to elicit topical ideas of the USA in a way that no other film has been able to since. The actions of the cast are so grotesque and abhorrent you think that it cannot be real yet, after thorough reading, most interactions that are displayed on screen were enacted with 100% authenticity by Sacha Baron Cohen; lets talk about him for a moment.

Sacha Baron Cohen is nothing short of an erudition in the way he presents Borat onto screen. As well as heavily producing it, he performs Borat without falter with his sliding accent and his ranging mannerisms. Sacha manages to make this appalling individual so likeable and somewhat innocent at every turn; an impressive feat given how crude man of the narrative beats are through the film. Throughout his journey he encounters pride groups, the deep south, feminists and so many groups which border taboo in how to handle their subject matter. The genius of interacting with these unknowing individuals is that every single point they make isn’t scripted; they are showing their true colours and, by proxy, the USA’s true colours. Borat is a character who either brings out the best or the worst in American culture thus painting the most concrete picture you can get of what Borat calls the “world’s greatest nation”.

Being filmed like a documentary, the film has a completely naturalistic visual palette; from cinematography to lighting, everything you see is most certainly real. The soundtrack is memorable enough in its stereotypical replication of Russian music (due to Kazakhstan’s culture hosting similarities to Russia’s) to enhance the absurdity on screen. On that note, Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is a film which uses stereotyping and (sometimes too much) shock value to shuttle the fundamental ideologies of the USA’s inhabitants onto a global stage for all of us to learn from.