Borat
dir. Larry Charles
wri. Sascha Baron Cohen
2006


Andy: "I've got lung cancer."
George: "That's not funny. That's too far."
Bob: "No, no, no, that's good. We can make that work."
Andy: "I'm not kidding."

- Man on the Moon

"If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks, it isn't."

- Crimes and Misdemeanors

A good comic can get the audience to laugh at him. A great comic can get the audience to laugh at themselves. But it's a rare kind of genius that can get an audience to do both at the same time.

Sacha Baron Cohen is a swift-boat comedian. He intentionally misrepresents the positions and experiences of others to challenge our self-perception.

Sometimes the joke is light, as when a dinner guest explains that he doesn't work anymore because he's "retired," and Borat expresses admiration that people with learning disabilities are allowed to work at all. "No, no, no, I said 'retired' not 'retarded.'"

Other times, Cohen takes real risks, demonstrating the one essential trait of the successful satirist: the willingness to put yourself further out on the plank than your subjects.

When Borat sings the alleged Kazakhstani national anthem for a rodeo crowd to the tune of the American national anthem, you truly fear for his chances of making out to the parking lot...especially when he claims that Kazakhstan's potassium exports are of higher quality than anyone else's (presumably including the U.S.)

NO ONE disrespects our potassium industry, you little foreign bastard!

My chief complaint about the film is the framing device. On his arrival in the US, Borat becomes entranced with Pamela Anderson and the film becomes a long road sketch about his quest to marry the beautiful CJ. What should have been a solid source of humor about America's beauty myth ended up narrowing the film's perspective.

That said, the Anderson device does lead to what is perhaps the greatest fight scene in film history, including Rocky vs. Hulk "Thunderlips" Hogan in Rocky III.

So, what makes Borat more than Latka Gravis with Tourette's? Well, Kauffman may have played Latka, and Kauffman may have wrestled women and antagonized rednecks, but not all at the same time, and that's what Baron Cohen brings to the table.

Two and a half stars. Jason sez, vary naaaaais.

Casino Royale (aka Bond Begins)
dir. Martin Campbell
2006

"Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident."

- Valerie Solanas, The SCUM Manifesto

There are few characters in film or literature as identifiably male as James Bond.

As gender roles and identity shifted and swam throughout the 70s and 80s, Bond became hazier, blurrier, more anachronistic and ultimately slid into self-parody.

What did it mean to be a playboy spy in the age of safe sex, shattered glass ceilings, ascendent monogamy, environmental responsibility and general sobriety? Two words: Timothy. Dalton. Shudder.

In the 90s, the series reinvented itself as generic action. Masculinity had returned to the screen over the years in the likes of John McClane and Martin Riggs and Bond followed rather than led in the person of Pierce Brosnan, who could jump a shark with the best of them, even if the shark had a frickin' laser on its head.

But the soul had gone out of the franchise, and we all knew it. Michael Myers' Austin Powers haunted the halls of MI-5 like the ghost of Yorick reminding us all that not much (living) daylight could pass between Bond and high camp.

But now, Casino Royale takes Bond where Bond needed to go.

It's a visionary reimagining, but there were weather vanes pointing in the right direction.

First, Craig Daniels, despite all early anxiety from the geekosphere, is perfect for the role.

There's a reason why Connery is far and away everyone's favorite Bond. Not because he originated the role, but because he's not a freakin' overgroomed pretty boy.

So, good play number one: find another Connery, not another Moore.

Second, dispense with the evolved, politically correct Bond (Dalton) but don't replace him with a borderline satire (Brosnan.) Neither of these criticisms applies to the actors, but to the writing.

Note the chemistry change between Dame Judi Dench and Bond. In the Brosnan movies, she was a scold and schoolmarm, chiding Bond for his out-of-date sexual politics and general naughty boy attitude. In this film, against a Bond of greater substance, she takes on a maternal, nuturing role.

In this film, Bond comes close to revealing M's true name, expressing surprise that 'M' actually stands for...

...well, she doesn't give him a chance to say, but I'm betting it rhymes with 'Honeypenny.'

So, good play number two: instead of reforming Bond, or lampooning him, make his lack of enlightenment a serious character flaw. Use it. What we love about him is what he hates about himself.

Third, understand that you are reimagining a cliched, corny premise, and embrace it not as camp nor as self-serious pretense, but as serious storytelling. If it's good enough for Battlestar Galactica, it's good enough for Bond.

Good play number three: make the FIRST Bond movie, not the twenty-first.

Finally, when the villain is torturing Bond, have him just repeatingly bash him in the nuts. You don't need any Rube Goldberg lava dipping machines to get a guy to talk.

Four stars, Jason Bond sez: go all in.

Manderlay
dir. Lars von Trier
2005

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
- Kris 'K'

"Victory in Iraq is essential."
- George 'B'

"I hope Neil Young will remember: a southern man don't need him around anyhow."
- Lynard 'S'

Does Lars von Trier have it in for women? After Dancer in the Dark (aka The Passion of the Bjork) and Dogville, it may be safe to say so, but he sure gives them plenty of work.

Manderlay is the sequel to 2003's Dogville and is the second film in a proposed trilogy on America (to end with Wasington.)

In Dogville, Nicole Kidman plays Grace, an idealistic young woman with a mysterious past and on the run from the law who is at first taken in warmly and then slowly tormented and tortured by the inhabitants of a small Colorado town.

If you haven't seen Dogville, a word of warning: this review contains spoilers.

Stop reading now. Seriously.

Okay, after escaping from Dogville, Grace (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard) and her father quite naturally take a drive to Alabama, which holds a great deal of interest for gangsters and their daughters. There, they run across a plantation known as Manderlay, where slavery (despite having been abolished 70 years earlier) is apparently still practiced.

Grace, having learned it seems nothing from her experiences in Colorado, stays behind along with some of her father's henchmen and vows to bring democracy to the people of Ira...uh, Manderlay.

After that, everything goes really well. Stop reading if you want to believe this. Seriously, stop.

Upon liberating the slaves from the oppressive rule of their master Mam (Lauren Bacall), Grace sets about establishing a functioning democracy. But she finds that the slaves have grown so dependent on Manderlay's system of laws (called 'Mam's Law') that they are essentially unable to function without it.

As the slaves shift their dependence from old Mam to Grace, she finds herself increasingly imprisioned by the very oppressive law she sought to supplant.

"How dumb do you think we are, Miss Grace?" asks Wilhelm (Danny Glover), the spokesman of for the slave population. "Too dumb to build a ladder if we really wanted to get away? My God, after 70 years, don't you think we could have set ourselves free if that's what we wanted?"

In a time of simple answers to complex questions ("cut n' run!" "stay the course!"), it's refreshing to see a filmmaker struggle to capture the overwhelming complexity of the human condition. In von Trier's world, moral clarity isn't just rare; it's non-existent. Ideas like right and wrong are overwhelmed by rationalization, compromise, custom and conflicts of legitimate interest.

In Manderlay, as in Dogville, the underlying struggle is that between the idealism of the naive individual and the brutality of the collective.

The individual idealist (Grace) has a clarity of vision, but lacks perspective. She is blindsided by the simple conundra which emerge in any practical society, such as how to handle the case of the slaves calling for the execution of one of their own who is caught stealing food. Stealing food when you're hungry is an understandable crime. But when the jury is also hungry, sympathy is hard to come by.

The collective can rationalize their brutality by distributing the blame. No single person need do any wrong, but between their reasonable defenses of their own interests, horrible injustices can emerge.

In both films, the resolution of this conflict seems to boil down to keeping an attractive young woman in bondage. This probably has more to do with von Trier's personal tastes than any larger theme.

Von Trier has been critized for having so much to say about the US without ever having visited. This criticism is more apt to Manderlay, which makes many specific comments about US black history, than with Dogville, which could have taken place just as easily in any small town in the world. But both films speak directly to a universal human experience: the struggle to define public values and personal morality.

At the current moment, the nation trembles in fear of "San Francisco Values(tm)" overwhelming our culture. Will the new speaker elect be our Grace? We shall see...

Four stars. Talkin' Jason sez that a free and democratic Manderlay is our strategy.