Hunter Biden

Dhe new “Borat” film by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen made headlines even before it was released: the reason for this is Rudy Giuliani. He was once celebrated as “America’s Mayor”, today he is known (or laughed at) as Donald Trump’s girl for everything.

The history of the scandal: Giuliani has been on a mission for many months – he wants to prove like hell that Hunter, the son of Joe Biden, did the wrong thing in the Ukraine. To prove it, Giuliani recently brought a handful of e-mails allegedly off of Hunter Biden’s computer hard drive.

Even right-wing television broadcaster Fox News thought it didn’t smell good somehow and refused to release the alleged evidence. In the midst of the excitement, the news burst that Sacha Baron Cohen has literally put Rudy Giuliani on the cross.

Pretty breathtaking

In truth, this credit is not due to Cohen, but to the young Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova. She plays in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (roughly: “Borat subsequent film artwork”) Borat’s blonde daughter. In the crucial sequence she mimes a real reporter with a Slavic extreme accent. After she has flirted with Giuliani to the max, she maneuvers him into the bedroom with gentle emphasis.

There Giuliani lets her lay him on the bed. Then Giuliani’s hand disappears into his pants. He claims today that he just wanted to stuff his shirt back into place. Most people prefer to do this while standing. Anyway, a second later Borat bursts into the bedroom himself. He wears a bra, exclaims in horror: “But she’s 15 – that’s far too old for you!” And instead offers Rudy Giuliani sex with him. It’s pretty breathtaking.

The whole thing suggests a rather uncomfortable conclusion: a person who is so easily fooled by a comedian is a delicious breakfast bite for the guys from the Russian secret service. What about Hunter Biden’s emails again?

The “Wuhan Virus” and the other plagues

For those who do not yet know Borat, it should be briefly explained that he is a journalist from Kazakhstan. Borat is of course an anti-Semite, as well as a racist and sexist, and he invented neither the deep plates nor the non-domineering discourse. In “Borat Subsequent Film Art Work” he and his daughter set out into the deepest Trump hinterland, that is to Texas or Oklahoma.

The climax is reached when Borat – disguised as an American hillbilly with a beard, stomach and dungarees – appears on an anti-lockdown demo. So in front of people with Confederate flags and semi-automatic submachine guns.

Borat picks up a funny little song about the content that Obama belongs in prison and that the Democrats should be infected with the “Wuhan virus”, that you have to deal with journalists like the Saudis (sawing through) and with scientists like the Germans ( gas). The demonstrators laugh and sing along loudly.

Decoration for the chocolate cake

There are other scenes that almost approach this one. In a pastry shop, for example, Borat has a fat, cozy baker spray the phrase “Jews will not replace us” on a chocolate cake. That was the slogan of the Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, to whom the American President later certified that there were “very good people” among them.

In the middle of this horribly funny film there are also touching sequences. At one point Borat disguises himself as a Jew. In other words: like the anti-Semitic caricature of a Jew. He glues a long nose to himself, puts on devil horns, straps black wings onto his shoulders and goes into a synagogue equipped with this.

There he meets two older Jewish women. One of them says: “We are just people”, we are just people. She lets him touch her nose, which isn’t particularly big. She tells him that as a child she survived the Holocaust, that this genocide really did exist. In the end, they share their food with him. “Tastes good, doesn’t it?”

In the end, the two women hug the fake Kazakhs and say: “Make love, not war.” All the while they don’t know that they are really dealing with a man whose mother is Israeli and whose father is a Jew from Wales was. (Borat’s Kazakh is Hebrew, spoken with a Slavic accent.)

America’s Eulenspiegel

In another scene, a black babysitter tries to talk Borat’s blonde daughter out of having breast enlargement. She has a brain, says the babysitter, she doesn’t have to do everything her father tells her to do. Then she embraces Borat’s daughter dearly.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s humor is sarcastic, hurtful, urbane, absurd, bitter, but never cynical. Not for a moment. Borate is something like the Till Eulenspiegel of our age. Not the harmless, soothed Eulenspiegel, which we know from the retelling of Erich Kästner, but the medieval Eulenspiegel, whose pranks are abysmal and painful.

Like Eulenspiegel, Borat wants to uncover something with his comedy. For example, when he shows up in full Ku Klux Klan outfit at an event hosted by Vice President Mike Pence and cheerfully exclaims: “I’m Steven Miller, I’m sorry I’m late!” (Miller is one of Donald’s closest confidants Trump and is jointly responsible for his brutal anti-immigrant policy.)

„Vote – or execute!“

It is also an owl mirror-like prank when Borat’s daughter appears at an event for Republican women – noisy ladies who think they are good Christians – and honestly proclaims that she has just taken hold of her genitals in the toilet and there are none at all Teeth in!

One of the most brilliant feats is how Borat seduces two supporters of the QAnon theory (who are known to believe that democrats are demons who drink children’s blood) to exclaim: “No, that’s not true, that’s a conspiracy theory!” Hair pulling out. To beep.

But “Borat Subsequent Film Art Work” is not a number revue. The film has a stringent plot that naturally should not be divulged here. Just so much: In the end, you think very differently about the coronavirus. And about Kazakhstan. But above all through the United States of America.

Sacha Baron Cohen shows us what an ugly face this country has. At the same time, Cohen shows us the greatness of America. His film ends with the seriously meant request: “Vote – or execute!” Vote – or execute!