Though the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane had qualified praise for Sasha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” (“somewhere inside the sound and fury that have shrouded this project is a short, gross and very funny series of sketches, lighty knotted together into a modern picaresque,”), it is safe to say his colleague George Saunders was not nearly as amused. From the December 4 New Yorker, Saunders’ suggested notes for the DVD verson of the film.
OPENING œVILLAGE SECTION: How about a high-speed montage of the actual difficult, brutal lives of the villagers in Romania”the hours of debilitating toil, their oppression at the hands of their corrupt government, premature loss of teeth, death of infants, etc., etc.”culminating in a panning shot of the village on the morning of the day when they first realize they™ve been had, and that, as far as posterity goes, they will always be remembered, if remembered at all, as savages, rapists, prostitutes, etc., and they stumble out of their little sheds or whatever, looking traumatized? (Would be good if one or two could fall into depression/commit suicide as a result = confirmation of their œsubhuman status? Rich social commentary.)
ALT: The scene where the one-armed old man, many months later, weeps in his room at the memory of being tricked into wearing a sex toy on his arm. Priceless!