Sunday

Some may have already noticed, or I might have even said in my previous review of the film, that Borat is essentially a documentary. I don't mean this literally, or that the fictional documentary style of the movie is to be taken seriously. Rather, the project of the film is to expose what people think, and whilst the methods it uses to achieve this are different to a conventional documentary, it has to be said that they are not unrelated. The presenter pretends that he is innocent and naive to their customs in order to let them open up and reveal their true feelings (this is essentially the style of Louis Theroux). Borat holds himself up as a mirror for Americans to express their feelings on foreigners and on themselves. One might say that the film is a perfect document of the United States under the Bush administration - its insular, self-involved isolationism. Is the country really any different now under Obama? This is perhaps the object of Bruno, which I haven't yet seen, but it makes a neat parallel. Bush is represented by Borat, the misogynistic, sex-obsessed patriot; and Obama is represented by Bruno, the gay, artistic idealist. Stop me when I go too far.