Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

“Comedy is tragedy plus time� wrote Woody Allen in one of his best films, Crimes and Misdemeanors. The funniest humor often has an edge to it, traipsing perilously close to the bounds of propriety. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan clearly and intentionally crosses those bounds.

Whether crossing those bounds makes this shock film satirical genius or offensive bigotry depends on your perspective.

After Borat opened Nov. 3, it became the No. 1 film at the U.S. box office, surpassing a record previously held by Fahrenheit 9/11 for the biggest opening weekend for a film released in fewer than 1,000 theaters. Pre-release buzz and 94 percent favorable reviews on RottenTomatoes.com, a web site that summarizes film reviews, show that many regard Borat as the funniest movie of the year. And there was plenty of laughter at the screening I attended, including from a woman whose very laugh was infectious and caused the laughter to spread. While there were scenes of sizzling satire, I found my conscience more often troubled by the nature of the humor.

The 84-minute “mockumentary� is based on a character created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen from the “Da Ali G Show� on HBO. The plot is simple. Borat Sagdiyev is journalist from Kazakhstan who comes to America to make a documentary, encountering real Americans in real situations and using their unguarded responses in the film. After seeing an old Baywatch episode, he goes on a cross-country quest in an ice-cream truck to marry Pamela Anderson.

Borat is portrayed as the stereotypical foreign rube as well as an anti-Semitic, misogynistic, bigoted, ill-mannered and crude – but deceptively innocent -- guy. The R-rated film includes raw language, male frontal nudity, naked men wrestling, scatological gags and comments offensive to pretty much every group on the planet. The Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, about which there is virtually no shred of truth in the film, has hired Western public-relations firms to deal with what their Washington embassy called “a one-man diplomatic wrecking ball.� (Indeed, Cohen has conducted counter-press conferences saying that the Kazakh diplomats are really double-agents from Uzbekistan. And if they don’t desist, Kazakhstan will “commence bombardment of their cities with catapults.�)

You’re probably getting the sense that Cohen relies on interviews with people who don’t realize the nature of his intentions in this film. Where the satire works, Americans are unmasked as they spew their own hatred and bigotry of their own free will, such as a gun-seller who recommends a particular gun for use in defense against Jews. Or consider the actual audience response to Borat’s remarks at a rodeo in Roanoke, Va. -- “We support your war of terror. (Big applause) May we show our support to our boys in Iraq? (Applause) May the US and A kill every single terrorist. (Loud applause) May George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq. (Applause) May you destroy their country so for the next 1,000 years not even a single lizard will survive in their desert. (Loud applause)�

But Borat is nothing more than a foreign Archie Bunker from that ’70s TV show, “All in the Family.� Studies proved that not all viewers saw Archie’s comments as ignorant bigotry; many simply laughed in agreement. And Cohen simply pulls together all the worst American stereotypes of foreigners for cheap laughs.

Early in the film, Borat gets advice from a humor coach about the kind of humor that works in America. As Borat misfires on an offensive joke about someone with mental retardation, the coach says, “Here in America we try not to make fun of or be funny with things people do not choose.�

Borat ignores that advice in numerous instances as it perpetuates foul stereotypes or shames innocent bystanders for things as simple as physical appearance. At a dinner party in Alabama where six couples were hosting someone they thought was a foreign journalist, Borat points to two women beside him: “In my country, they would go crazy for these two.� Then he points to a minister’s wife: “(Her) not so much.�

As the government of Kazakhstan is finding out, Western media have unrivaled power to shape global opinion. A film like Borat simply manufactures an ugly caricature of foreigners and trumpets an even uglier American and Western mindset of cultural superiority over all.

No wonder a large portion of the world hates us.

The Departed

“Honesty is not synonymous with truth.�

When that phrase is uttered midway into The Departed, director Martin Scorsese’s best film in years, we are beginning to see the impact that lies have on two men of similar backgrounds, who have departed from the truth in service to different callings.

The two South Boston men become police officers with different motives. Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) seeks redemption from his family’s history of crime connections through taking a special assignment to infiltrate the Irish mob of Frank Costello. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), an orphaned altar boy, grows up admiring Costello and, at his bidding, joins the state police as Costello’s inside mole.

And it doesn’t take more than two minutes into The Departed to establish that Costello is what actor Jack Nicholson described his character to be: “the ultimate incarnation of evil.�

“When I was your age, they would say you could become cops or criminals. What I’m saying to you is this: When you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?� Costello tells Sullivan, who is assigned to a special unit working to catch his mentor.

For the rest of the 2-hour-and-21-minute film, viewers become engaged with these and other rich and fascinating characters. The principal question becomes which man will find the other first. Questions of morality fly by like hurdles in a steeplechase.

Adapted from the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs by screenwriter William Monahan (Kingdom of Heaven), The Departed deals with lies, betrayal and deception – none greater than the ways in which characters deceive themselves.

Living in a world of lies begins to impact each man in different ways. Sullivan’s glamorous apartment, which should have been a clue to his police colleagues that something was amiss, overlooks the state capitol and Beacon Hill. He dreams of gold and becoming a lawyer. Although cool and unfazed by police attempts to root him out, Sullivan is the more self-deceived of the pair, vainly hoping that his path will lead to respectability. Meanwhile, Costigan’s path first goes through prison in order to build confidence with underworld elements. Later, he suffers physically and emotionally for the crimes he commits with Costello’s gang in the hope of not blowing his cover. Ultimately, he searches in vain for the identity of the man he once was.

Despite the excitement, the film does have some flaws. It is a bit of a stretch that both “moles� sleep with Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), a psychiatrist who works with police officers and others who experience violence. (Although each man’s relationship with Madolyn does reveal insights into his inner character.) We can see that lying is difficult work for the moles, each carrying around two sets of cell phones and needing to keep track of which client is calling. (But it’s funny that the police never thought about listening in on the cell phone traffic to catch the mob’s undercover operative within their ranks.)

The film’s R rating comes for its pervasive foul language and brutal violence, although it’s not as graphic as Scorsesee’s Gangs of New York. And the language is very appropriate to the rich and vibrant characters in this film’s all-star cast, including Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg.

Although this graphic portrayal may be too much for some viewers, these honest depictions do communicate deeper truths about the nature of lies. Those who deceive may ultimately become easily deluded themselves about whether they’ve really heard the truth from others.

The Illusionist

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.� -- Matthew 6:22-23

When Jesus preached those words in the Sermon on the Mount, he essentially was saying that life could be an illusion. Or, as put by the tagline to one of the best films so far this year, “nothing is what it seems.�

The Illusionist takes viewers on a captivating journey to 19th-century Vienna, where Eisenheim, a mysterious magician played by Edward Norton (Kingdom of Heaven, Fight Club), returns after years of absence to amaze and stun the people with his performances. His popularity captures the attention of Viennese officials, who seek to unmask the performer as a fraud, in part to cover their own deceptions.

Made by the producers of Crash, last year’s Oscar-winning best picture, The Illusionist combines political machinations, romance, turn-of-the-century beauty and the supernatural into a powerful story that illustrates how our lives can be shaped by the way we choose to perceive the world around us. If we see things clearly, we are not deceived. But if the hand is quicker than our eyes, our judgments could be shrouded in darkness.

If the question of perception isn’t enough, what makes The Illusionist the best film I’ve seen so far this year is the way this deftly crafted story is filled with rich and fascinating characters. Written and directed by Neil Burger (based on the short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist� by Steven Millhauser), this film is destined for best screenplay nominations at award time.

The 110-minute film is a character-driven movie, and perhaps nowhere is that better illustrated than in the portrayal of Chief Inspector Uhl by Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Lady in the Water, Cinderella Man). Giamatti’s performance is stunning as a man torn between his search for the truth and his desire for professional advancement through his service to the Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell). The Chief Inspector becomes our point of view for the film as we wonder whether Eisenheim’s performances are well-contrived illusions or the supernatural deeds many in his audience believe them to be.

Immediately suspicious of the magician, the Crown Prince becomes involved in a more direct rivalry with Eisenheim when it is discovered that the magician was a forbidden childhood sweetheart of the prince’s fiancée, the duchess Sophie von Teschen, played by Jessica Biel (Elizabethtown). As a peasant boy, Eisenheim watched as his love was taken from him; as a powerful magician, will he stand aside a second time? Especially when, beneath all her finery, Sophie still wears a wooden locket Eisenheim made for her years ago – a locket that contains his picture and can only be opened in a special way.

Enhanced by a beautiful score by contemporary composer Philip Glass, The Illusionist raises the question of whether truth can exist in an illusion. Eisenheim openly proclaims, “Everything you have seen here is an illusion.� While the Crown Prince, scheming to overthrow his father, insists that nothing is up his sleeve. These two perspectives cannot co-exist – especially when Eisenheim directly challenges the Crown Prince’s right to rule with one of his tricks.

The Illusionist helps us to realize the thin boundary that exists between illusion and reality, love and obsession, public service and self-interest, life and death. And its surprising plot twists will certainly test your level of perceptivity. In the end, although perceptions affect one’s view of the world, it is the choices we make that determine our fate.

World Trade Center

Only 20 people were pulled alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center. The new film World Trade Center tells an intimate story of the 18th and 19th men rescued, New York Port Authority Police Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and Officer William Jimenez (Michael Peña).

The much-anticipated second Hollywood Sept. 11 film in some ways is like United 93, which this spring retold the story of the passengers aboard the plane that crashed into Pennsylvania farmland after a struggle with the hijackers. World Trade Center returns the viewer to the immediate emotional feelings of the day – the shock and chaos, confusion and disbelief. Like United 93, World Trade Center is almost apolitical – a marvel for some who anticipate a conspiracy from each film directed by Oliver Stone (JFK, Born on the Fourth of July). Still, the 2-hour and 6-minute film returns viewers in 2006 to another political reality – one in which the world wept along with us and Americans were united, if only for a brief time.

The trailer promoting the film features a satellite image of lower Manhattan on Sept. 11. Yet while the PG-13 film is set in the context of the earth-shattering event, it focuses on the intimate and personal relationships of these two men.

Responding to a crisis for which there is no crisis plan, a small team of officers volunteer to follow Sgt. McLoughlin into the towers on a rescue operation. After assembling their gear, they are just beginning to make their way through a concourse between the towers when the first tower collapses. World Trade Center vividly depicts the sense of being inside the hell of a collapsing building.

“What good did we do?� asks Jimenez, who is well-portrayed by Peña (who starred as the locksmith in Crash, the Oscar-winning best picture of 2005). Yet Jimenez, one of only a few of the Port Authority officers to volunteer to go into the tower, realizes that heroism and courage begin with being willing to act. Later, he reassures McLoughlin, who is feeling guilt-ridden for having led his men into the tower, “They couldn’t live with themselves if they hadn’t gone in.�

Much of the film’s center alternates between the claustrophobic space inhabited by McLoughlin and Jimenez, their families’ anxious vigils and the memories of life’s shared interactions.

Indeed the strongest message of the film is that humans are intrinsically connected – through memories the men share with their loved ones, through their pained conversation as they try to motivate each other to fight for life and through the selfless responses of others involved in their rescue.

The most vivid of those human responses is a true story that involved retired Marine Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon). Karnes describes feeling a call from God to put on his uniform and go to the tragedy’s epicenter to try to rescue people from the rubble. Dissuaded by his pastor and averting the restricted access, Karnes turned out to be one of the men who found the place where the two officers were trapped.

The script by newcomer Andrea Berloff focuses on the tiniest details about choices and actions, which make the difference between regret and happiness, between death and life. McLoughlin left for work that morning without kissing goodbye his wife, Donna (Maria Bello). Jimenez and his pregnant wife, Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal), each regret their failure to compromise on a name for their unborn daughter. In another instance, Jimenez recalls that an officer’s offer to switch places with him spared his life but cost the other man his. Donna McLoughlin, wondering whether she’ll ever get a chance to see her own husband, comforts a woman who is stricken by angry words last spoken to her missing loved one.

As the officers struggle to survive, they alternate between waking consciousness, memories and hallucinations. While pinned and choking on dust and rocks, Jimenez has a vision of the Sacred Heart of Jesus offering him a liter bottle of cool water. That iconic Catholic devotional image, often depicted in sacred art, merges into the response of the rescuers, offering the men cool water and risking their own lives in service to them.

While World Trade Center movingly depicts the personal stakes and heroism of Sept. 11, this film and director Paul Greengrass’s United 93 have played it safe as the first major 9/11 films. Few would criticize stories of American heroism: passengers fighting back against the terrorists or two policemen struggling to survive. Yet one wonders when will we see cinematic portrayals of families whose lives were utterly destroyed by the events, a depiction of what motivated the attacks or an illustration of how 9/11 has changed our society?

Although highly moving, World Trade Center at some points comes close to feeling like one of those child-trapped-in-a-well films. Its proximity and faithfulness to the actual events makes it powerful. Time will tell which is its true legacy.

Scoop

What makes a good story? And how much can you believe about what anyone tells you?

American journalism student Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson) is just beginning to get an idea. That is, when she’s not trying to interview a famous director, sleeping with him and forgetting to actually get the story. Sondra also has problems understanding what makes a story credible. And a lack of a credible and compelling story is the same weakness of Scoop, the newest film from writer/director Woody Allen.

That’s where British journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) comes in. Joe will do anything to get a good story – even try to cheat death. So while traversing the river Styx at the hands of the Grim Reaper and accompanied by a group of stiffs, he meets a woman who says she was the last victim of the fabled Tarot Card killer. And that the killer, Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), is the son of a British lord.

In pursuit of his last scoop, Joe manages to contact Sondra as she is placed into a disappearing booth – a dematerializer -- by Sid Waterman (Allen), a Vaudeville-type magician who goes by “the Great Splendini.� Telling her she’s being handed “the biggest story since Jack the Ripper,� Joe becomes an unimpeachable source – if he were alive, that is.

After several tips from Joe, Sondra decides to prove she has what it takes to become a journalist and to break free from her familial destiny as a dental hygienist. But she creates a false persona for herself, introducing Waterman as her father to Lyman and his lordly crowd. The details she uncovers are merely circumstantial. And to make matters worse, she begins to fall in love with Lyman, the subject of her investigation.

Allen’s second consecutive film in London (following Match Point), Scoop provides some entertaining slapstick and barbs, particularly from Allen’s character. “I was brought up in the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to narcissism,� he explains to the aristocrats. While the film is entertaining, it lacks the weight of Match Point and of Allen’s best morality plays, such as Crimes and Misdemeanors.

But it does give us the familiar neurotic characters Allen plays best. “I never gain an ounce,� Waterman tells Sondra. “My anxiety attacks work like aerobics.�

The 96-minute film illustrates the level of deception needed to maintain a good story – or a bad lie. In the end, the film turns on the characters’ ability to tell the difference between truth and fiction. But, as the jokes suggest, their collective discernment is somewhat lacking.

As Waterman and Sondra follow Lyman, Allen’s character speculates that perhaps the mysterious British lord is driven by some secret and shameful passion short of murder.

“Maybe he belongs to one of those clubs where they are cross-dressers?� he says. “Or maybe he does folk dancing.� Scoop is full of such fun. But this story has a shorter life than newsprint.

Monster House

“Every neighborhood has a house with a secret,� promises the trailer to Monster House. And those tantalizing secrets take three kids on an exciting adventure that will have children in nervous anticipation and adults, like me, in nostalgic contemplation.

Perhaps this year’s best animated film to date focuses on two boys, DJ (Mitchel Musso) and his friend, Chowder (Sam Lerner), whose ball rolls onto the lawn of their crotchety old neighbor Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi). The man is possessed with rage for anyone who trespasses on his lawn, so much so that in his anger at DJ he apparently suffers a heart attack. DJ feels remorse, while Chowder tries to convince him that their troubles are over. But are they? What explains the mysterious phone calls to DJ’s home or continuing disappearances?

One of the strengths of Monster House is that it is rooted in the familiar idiosyncrasies of American suburban life. Its message – “Whatever you do, don’t go on the lawn� – is a familiar refrain to many of us.

Monster House recalled for me several of the people in the neighborhood where I grew up – from the woman with her hoarded collection of footballs and baseballs to the man who would go into tirades if anything brushed a blade of his grass. Their bizarre and anti-social behavior always baffled my friends and me, until we discovered some deeper emotional issues that were at the root. The woman, for example, had an estranged relationship with her adult son, who now wanted nothing to do with his mother. Living a life of remorse, she acted out against boys who, for her, represented the kind of friends that took her son away.

But learning about the psychological underpinnings of adults’ emotional problems, didn’t excuse their behavior. Nor did it take away from the comical behavior we sometimes witnessed. Imagine a woman in her late 50s in a dress and heels, her arms loaded with groceries, sprinting down a sidewalk to try to snatch a football that came to rest against the edge of her lawn before my friend could retrieve it. Could you blame him for doing a Billy “White shoes� Johnson celebration with the ball after he beat her to it by only a step?

But Monster House is a delightful animated feature, because it takes instances like that and goes one step further. The behaviors of a frightening neighbor become personified in his residence, which snatches balls, kites, small pets – even police cars. When the boys rescue Jenny (Spencer Locke), a prep school over-achiever, they gain a new friend and a motivation for competition.

Adults don’t believe what’s going on. At best, failing to understand, they resort to simple solutions. “No more Mountain Dew,� says the babysitter. At worst, they’re self-absorbed and completely oblivious. “We’ll be back tomorrow night. Oh. If anything happens, call the police and hide in your closet,� says the mom (Catherine O’Hara). “He knows that,� adds the dad (Fred Willard). The message is clear, as sometimes it is in life, you’re on your own to figure this out. And so, DJ turns to his friends as he tries to deal with both the Monster House and puberty.

The PG film was directed by Gil Kenan with the motion-capture animation technique used in The Polar Express. But the characters in Monster House seem less artificial than their images in that film. There are a few scary points for little ones. (There was at least one moment when my 8-year-old was beginning to cover her eyes.) But, at its heart, Monster House is a love story that contains both the good and the bad – the positive feelings of love and the possessiveness that can result when love becomes overbearing.

The film provides a good illustration of St. Paul’s famous “love poem� in 1 Corinthians 13 in which he describes love’s nature as one that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.� We can learn that sometimes what appears to us as madness is driven by motives we do not fully understand, including love and self-sacrifice.

The 1-hour-and-31-minute film brings together Executive Producers Stephen Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, whose previous partnerships include Back to the Future. And Monster House shares some of the fun spirit of that classic ‘80s adventure trilogy. It’s a roller-coaster ride that surprises you with moments of tenderness and insight.

Nacho Libre

How can I free myself from the mundane tasks I’m now doing to become what God truly wants me to be? (And if it just so happens that I’m lousy at what I think God wants me to be, can I blame God for it?)

Those questions are at the heart of Nacho Libre, the new Paramount comedy by the writer/director of 2004’s cult hit Napoleon Dynamite. Nacho Libre literally means “free nacho,� and the 1-hour and 40-minute film follows the haphazard journey of Ignacio “Nacho� (Jack Black), an orphan turned friar. Nacho seeks to break free from his humble occupation as an orphanage cook to become one of Mexico’s greatest lucha libre wrestlers. Lucha libre, which means freestyle fighting, is a form of professional wrestling begun in Mexico in the 1930s, and this PG film captures some of its quirkiness. The script, co-written by director Jared Hess and his wife, Jerusha, has several funny situations, but seems more a collection of gags or sketches than a cohesive story.

En route to his dream, Nacho faces some obstacles. The monks and beautiful Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera) think wrestling is ungodly and its heroes “false idols.� And then there’s Nacho’s own lack of talent. He keeps on losing, but the loser’s share of the purse helps him buy better food for the orphanage anyway. “I don’t want to get paid to lose. I want to win,� Nacho says, praying: “Precious Father, why have you given me this desire to wrestle and then made me such a stinky warrior?�

Nacho seems all style – bad style – and little substance. Just when it seems he’s on a path to victory and the crowd chants his name, he revels in the moment, ripping open his shirt rather than finishing the match. He gets clobbered and loses again.

Like many of us, Nacho searches for quick fixes to his success – a better outfit, “Eagle powers,� a professional classification – rather than having the discipline to work hard for what he desires. Yet what passes as training for Nacho is slapstick silliness. Although Nacho’s own songs are comical, he is like the songwriter who confess that “God gave me� the words to a song so bad that God couldn’t be the one to blame.

Nacho tries to keep his moonlighting a secret, but is discovered by one of the orphans trying out his lame pants. “Chancho, when you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants in your room,� he tells the boy. “It’s for fun.� When he is finally unmasked, he announces his desire to win for the orphans, “so the school could have a bus for fieldtrips.� The sister responds, “If you fight for something noble, something right, only then will God bless you.� But is that always the case?

This film’s namesake, nachos, are fun food – especially if they’re accompanied by other fun foods. But at about 50 calories per chip, they’re not very nutritious. They simply don’t deliver nutrition if you’re really hungry.

Nacho Libre has moments of sheer fun. But it neither captures the magic of Napoleon Dynamite nor does it present a coherent retelling of a hero’s journey. And if you didn’t like or get Napoleon Dynamite in the first place, you might as well stay clear away from Nacho Libre. But if this kind of humor is for you, then bring the salsa, melted cheese and bean dip.