Satire, if done well, can be the most effective way to shatter the audience’s preconceived notions about something or someone.
When “Borat: Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” came out in 2006, it did just that. It was an elevated version of “Punk’d,” but instead of celebrities, it was real Americans, and the gaffes themselves were telling the story of America. Remember “Punk’d”? Remember 2006? Is it terrible that reminiscing on a time when we were arguing about U.S. troops’ occupation in Iraq feels quaint? Probably.
Fourteen years later, Sacha Baron Cohen, the mind and body behind Borat, has returned for a follow-up. “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” premiered Sept. 23 on Amazon Prime Video to mostly critical acclaim.
There is an inherent problem now with satirizing America. It’s become such a satire of itself, in the real world, that comedy about it doesn’t hit like it used to. So there is plenty of reason to ask, “why now?” The timing is obvious, with a release scheduled mere weeks before the election — especially when news trickles out that Rudy Giuliani is seen in a compromising position during the climax of the film.
So, when the satire of the 2006 movie is the reality of this country in 2020, how does “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” work so well (and, I’d argue, better than the original)?
It has a lot more plot, and a lot more heart. And that begins and ends with Maria Bakalova, who plays Borat’s daughter Tutar.
The reason for Borat Sagidyev’s return to America 14 years later is that the first movie humiliated Kazakhstan so much that Borat was imprisoned in a Gulag for life. Only when Donald Trump becomes president does Borat get a chance at redemption, and he is tasked with delivering Johnny the Monkey (who is — stay with me — the Foreign Minister of Culture for Kazakhstan) to Vice President Mike Pence.
So he’s off, back to the place where he made “my wife” and “very nice” a daily utterance at every high school in America for a solid two years. Only this time, his daughter is along for the ride — and, in doing so, makes “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” much less about gross-out humor and much more about the human experience. Though, there is still gross-out humor.
Bakalova is a revelation, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of find for Baron Cohen and the casting director. The 24-year-old Bulgarian actress had just graduated from drama school in 2019 and was one of 500 who auditioned for the role.
“I didn’t want to start filming until we found the perfect daughter for Borat,” Baron Cohen said in an Oct. 27 interview with Stephen Colbert, “and it’s a tough order because you have to be an incredible improviser, you have to be able to stay in character for many, many hours, you have to be able to play emotional in the reality of the scenes, and you have to be hilarious.”
Bakalova more than delivers, and it’s clear as the film progresses, that Baron Cohen is slowly swiveling the spotlight off of himself and onto her — most notably in her genuinely touching interactions with a babysitter who tries to counsel her.
“If she doesn’t win an Oscar, then I don’t know what the Academy is for,” Baron Cohen said.
The scenes in the movie involving Pence and Giuliani are clearly the headline-grabbers, but it is the moments with real America (and, I’ll just say, Trump’s America) that prove the most powerful for Baron Cohen’s vision of a Borat sequel right now.
Baron Cohen has an incredible knack for egging people on, allowing them to dig their own grave under the guise of informing this ignorant and inquisitive Kazakhstani man about the U.S. There is one sequence, in particular, that serves a microcosm for the entire conceit of the “Borat” films.
Borat is by himself as the coronavirus forces the country into quarantine, and he asks a man if he could stay with him. The guy, and his friend who we meet at his house later, are the epitome of QAnon conspiracy-theorist land. They’re talking about the Clintons drinking the blood of children and all kinds of other vile untruths that have become reality for a (hopefully still very small) pocket of America.
And yet, against all our preconceived judgments about these types of people, they sheltered and graciously let a man, whom they believed to be from a central Asian country whose population is predominantly of Islamic faith, live with them for a few days.
The idea of people believing the Clintons feed off children is, sadly, not shocking anymore in 2020. That’s how the overall shock-factor of this movie cannot live up to its predecessor.
But what “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” does in its stead is show us a much more human side to this country — for better or worse — to the characters Baron Cohen and Bakalova play, and the real people who were placed inside of this ruse against their will.
Warner Strausbaugh is a page designer for The Denver Gazette and columnist for Pikes Peak Newspapers. Contact him at warner.strausbaugh@gazette.com.
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