Borat

יום שלישי כ''ג בחשון תשס''ז

Yep. I went and saw the controversial mockumentary comedy film , tonight. . . . I didn't like it as much as I had expected (the _practical joke_ kind of humor that is the film is based in is a genre I often find more cruel than funny) . . . . But Sacha Baron Cohen clearly is a great comic talent. . . . And this flick has the most amazing lampooning of anti-Semiticism I have ever seen. I know some people have been offended by it, but the Jew in me felt empowered -- Cohen just brutally exposes how absurd anti-Semetic ideas and images really are.

One thing I noticed -- that I do not recall seeing mentioned in the reviews that I had read -- is that Borat speaks in Hebrew (and Yiddish?) words and phrases for a substantial part of the film. I had been under the impression that the foreign phrases he uses were gibberish, but apparently many of them are Polish in addition to the Hebrew ones. . . . It's part of the brilliance of the thing that Cohen is pretending to be an anti-Semite, while at the same time speaking Jewish language.