Dennis Lim
Fans and detractors alike will bring the same set of questions to the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie, The Dictator, in which he plays Admiral General Aladeen, the tyrannical, extravagantly bearded leader of the fictional Republic of Wadiya. What fresh outrage have we now from this British comic guerrilla who has managed to annoy the Anti-Defamation League, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the government of Kazakhstan, to name just a few unamused parties? Who exactly is the joke on this time, and will they get it? And what happens when the most aggressive and confrontational satirist in contemporary comedy has to make do without real-life foils and stooges?
The Dictator confirms Baron Cohen?s knack for distilling exaggerated stereotypes, political triggers and cultural hot buttons into a single, monumentally ridiculous figure. But it also inaugurates a new phase of his career, not least for introducing his first new persona in more than a decade. The three daredevil buffoons in his repertoire?the British gangsta poseur Ali G, the Kazakh simpleton Borat, the Austrian fashionista Bruno?were developed on his series Da Ali G Show. All three were broadcast journalists of a sort, which allowed Baron Cohen?s farces to double as expos?s, ambush documentaries designed to highlight the vanity and vacuity of his subjects or the tipping point of their tolerance.
Given the obvious difficulties of masquerading as a murderous despot ? and perhaps because the supply of camera-ready dupes has dwindled after Borat and Br?no ? The Dictator is Baron Cohen?s first American vehicle to be fully scripted and cast with professional actors. But in recounting the exploits of a stranger in a strange land, the film retains the template he has adopted since crossing the Atlantic himself in 2003: a de Tocquevillian journey that purports to illuminate the psyche of America and its place in the world.
Baron Cohen?s stock in trade is the culture clash, which he sees as a bottomless source of comedy and horror. The Dictator stages an absurd collision in consigning Aladeen, a short-fused megalomaniac with a taste for high-class prostitutes and a budding nuclear programme, to an organic health food co-op in Brooklyn, where an overalls-clad activist, Zoe (Anna Faris), has mistaken him for a Wadiyan dissident. A deeply improbable romance blooms, though contrary to early reports?presumably planted by Baron Cohen?The Dictator is not an adaptation on Zabibah and the King, a romantic novel set in ancient Iraq once believed to have been written by Saddam Hussein.
As always Baron Cohen?s insistence on staying in character off screen is part of the performance-art project?and the marketing campaign. Aladeen made the most of his Oscar red-carpet moment by dumping the powdery contents of an urn on Ryan Seacrest (?You?ve got Kim Jong-il on you?) and besides creating a densely informative website for the Republic of Wadiya (which a map situates on the Horn of Africa, next to Somalia) complete with investment tips (?Wadiya boasts of over 400,000 square miles of unspoiled desert ready to be spoiled?) and breaking news crawl (?Aladeen orders Heidi Klum to end marriage to Seal?), Baron Cohen is doing interviews only in character.
Asked about the arrival of The Dictator on the heels of a bad year for tyrants, with the Arab Spring and the death of Kim Jong-il, Baron Cohen, as Aladeen, responded forcefully by e-mail: ?Some would say that an age of print media is passing, but you don?t see me throwing that in your face do you, New York Times? And what?s up with this pay wall of yours? Only 10 free articles a month? And you call me the tyrant!? But to answer your question, no, I do not think that an age of tyranny is passing. We are merely in the eye of the storm. The Arab Spring is just a silly fad, like ?mood rings? or ?human rights.? And I don?t worry about it happening in Wadiya, because my people love me so greatly. However, just to be safe, I have removed all the spring months from the calendar and made February 128 days long.?
Faris said Baron Cohen seldom broke character on set?cast and crew frequently addressed him as Supreme Leader?which is perhaps no surprise given that Borat and Br?no were full-body immersions that required him to keep a straight face at all costs. ?It?s the same here in that he fully embodies a character that is very different from himself,? Faris said. She added with a laugh, ?Well, I guess only in some regards.? Asked to elaborate, she said: ?I think all of us have a little dictator in us. Let?s just say I think he enjoyed playing the role.?
The film?s director, Larry Charles, who also directed Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) and Br?no (2009), said The Dictator was a much more traditional operation. ?We?d been used to driving around in two unmarked vans, jumping out, shooting, getting one take, jumping back in the van and running away ? and then later getting sued.? They could refine lines this time, he added, ?but we were also trying to maintain the verve, the spontaneity, the urgency, the edge of the other movies.?
Often that meant minimising the number of crew members involved in a scene and maximising the degree of potential chaos, especially on the streets of New York City. ?It?s energising,? Faris said. ?And I think it fed into the idea of him being this sort of glorified wild man. But logistically it can also be very difficult.? Even though he was working this time with clued-in co-stars?as opposed to setting traps for gullible politicians, celebrities and bigots?he would still needle them to elicit the desired reaction.
Unlike many politically inclined comics Baron Cohen, whose family is Orthodox Jewish and who wrote his Cambridge thesis on the role of Jews in civil rights-era America, is at his funniest?and bravest?when his agenda is most blatant, as when he trashes a store full of kitsch Confederate memorabilia in Borat. In The Dictator, which pokes fun at the excesses of a Qaddafi-like villain, he also has some geopolitical points to make about back-room arms and oil deals, and in a climactic speech, a deadly sharp point to convey about the sorry state of American democracy. ?I know everyone would like to de-emphasise that a little bit,? Charles said of the studio?s reluctance for The Dictator to be seen as political. ?But I?m very proud that there?s a political element to it.?