1.85:1 DVD capture: Borat The DVD

Fox ushers Borat: Culture Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan to DVD in competing widescreen and fullscreen editions--we received the former for review. Allowing for fluctuations in video quality due to the variety of media used, the 1.78:1, 16x9-enhanced transfer is stellar; the majority of the piece was shot in HD and, bypassing 35mm altogether on the way to disc, actually looks more filmlike--or, at least, less pixellated--here than it did in cinemas. Considering the genre and the documentary nature of the material, the accompanying Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is quite rich, if predictably two-dimensional; dialogue reproduction again bests the theatrical experience. Despite that the usual studio disclaimers precede the film, the creators have abstained from recording an audio commentary, presumably because they're already in enough hot water. Instead, under "Surplus Material," we get eight deleted scenes ("Censored Footages") and other ephemera ("Propaganda"); the menus, as you probably surmised, are careful to maintain the Borat aesthetic. I imagine a lot of people will head straight to the elisions for a fresh fix of Borat, but don't get too excited: in most cases, there's a reason they were cut. A sequence where Borat tortures a grocery-store manager is a bigger endurance test for the audience, and while Sacha Baron Cohen admirably stays in character both times Borat's ice-cream truck is pulled over by the cops (he aggravates one officer by asking for a high-five), an evasive cutting procedure shatters the illusion by making what we're not seeing--namely, corporate wheel-greasing--painfully obvious. That said, two bits were worth preserving: a local evening news report about Borat's rodeo hijinks that manages to martyr the racist, homophobic douchebag who commiserates with our hero in the movie proper; and a refreshingly silly "Baywatch" spoof ("Sexydrownwatch"), compared to which the rest of Borat looks like a pretentious NEW YORKER cartoon. These are all presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen--not so the 17-minute "Global Propaganda Tour" (onscreen title: "Borat: Global Visitings and Television Showings for Purposes of Propaganda of Documentary"), an artless but engaging highlight reel in 4:3 letterbox showcasing Borat's public appearances in the weeks leading up to the film's release, including his stops at Comic-Con and "Saturday Night Live". (They've even incorporated footage of the infamous TIFF screening where the projector crapped out and no less than Michael Moore tried unsuccessfully to save the day.) Rounding out the platter: a "Musics Infomercial" (1 mins.) for a soundtrack that may or may not exist; and a trailer for Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj, advertised as "Coming Kazakhstan 2028." Lucky Kazakhs.-

British Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, as his Kazakhstani journalist alter ego Borat, tells former Georgia senator Bob Barr that the cheese Barr's just eaten was made from his wife's breast milk, and he does it in such a way as to suggest the naïf savage stereotype's unaffected innocence as it preys on the secret bigot in us all. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (hereafter Borat) lays on America's belief that the rest of the world is run and populated by ridiculous children alternately in need of careful guidance and firm scolding. The Borat character, then, is very much a creation of the shortsightedness of a condescending American intolerance, while his ability to infiltrate America's living rooms speaks to a complex national desire to fold the aliens it abhors to its breast in some sort of misplaced act of missionary grace. If we reduce the aim of evangelical Christianity down to the twin compulsions of damnation and salvation, what Borat really does is reveal the hypocrisy at the root of our professed acceptance and, more troublingly, highlight how divorced we are from the guiding principles of this sea to shining sea. In a film that does this much to expose the ugly undercurrent of homophobia, racism, and xenophobia in this country, it's no great surprise when New York subway riders threaten to kill Borat for kissing them on the lips in exuberantly misguided greeting--and the reactions of these Big Apple commuters strike me as refreshingly honest.

For the rest of what are most-often described as "cringe-inducing" moments, consider that although the targets in the picture are relatively soft (the kinds of provincial bumpkins Borat skewers are fairly common the world over, after all), the audience finds itself identifying with the dupes and the prudes, the rednecks and the retards. Borat is an astonishing meta-text because it has its cake and eats it, too: we laugh because we recognize that there's something horrific about a group of rodeo-goers agreeing en masse that Bush Jr. should drink the blood of every Iraqi man, woman, and child, as well as something impolite about pointing it out. The connection between the cultural mores of the millennial United States and those of Victorian England emerge in the margins of Borat when it's not busy shooting fish in a barrel. It seems that the only value left treasured in this country is civility, and once the lights come up on our beloved alien's Kool-Aid acid test, the odd realization dawns that we might be stuck in the quagmire in which we're stuck because the best intended were too deadened to affect any sort of meaningful change in time to matter. The assholes win since they're assholes and the rest of us are just cowed and appalled enough to turn away.- (excerpted from a longer review found here)

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
84 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
French Dolby Surround,
Spanish Dolby Surround,
Russian Dolby Surround,
Hebrew Dolby Surround
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, Spanish
DVD-5
Region One
Fox

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Published: March 5, 2007