'Weapons of Mass Discomfort'

Brüno

Directed: Larry Charles

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen

Universal Pictures, R, 83 minutes

I sat directly in front of two elderly women, right next to two teenage boys and exactly behind two middle aged men during a screening of Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest, but not greatest, docucomedy about a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista who craves the American spotlight and all the superficiality that comes with it. Within this nexus of demographics, I was able to experience Baron Cohen’s film in an entirely different setting by assessing the hilarity of said experience through the people around me. Here they were, every major audience represented in a film whose goal can only be said to be purposefully dividing.

There were giggles, groans, grunts and guffaws during various slapstick and slap-dick moments, but one scene in particular, in which the titular character screens a potential American television pilot to a focus group, left the most permanent and telling divide: Brüno/Baron Cohen flaunts his/a stunt double’s penis on screen, swirling it around with Truffaut-esque confidence, until it stops in place and speaks to the viewers.

The elderly women behind me howled with laughter, while the teenagers to my right turned away from the screen, pathetically pleading for the scene to have never happened, accompanied by the obligatory chuckle. And the middle-aged men in front of me? They sat in complete silence, not uttering a single world, either out of shock or disapointment. Yet, there was something suspiciously counterfeit in regards to the bellowing elderly women, something that seemed disingenuous and forced; a hope, perhaps, to banish any sort of suspicion of prudery, proving themselves beyond any level of easy disgust. The same could be said for the teenagers sitting next to me, who seemed to have been more disturbed than amused, only letting out a barley sincere chuckle both as a reminder to those around them (and, perhaps, themselves as well) that this is a film they're supposed to enjoy.

Such is Brüno, a film that surveys the current American landscape to the point where not only are the essence of the people on screen called into question, but the sincerity of the audience watching. No one goes unmentioned, unscathed or, sadly, understood. In Baron Cohen’s desperate love for inevitable envelope pushing, he’s foregone anything that made his 2006 pop culture behemoth, Borat, work. As opposed to gut-busting laughs and thought provoking subject matter, he’s settled for cultural objectification and, sadly, audience obligation: to not laugh during Brüno would leave you either too set in your ho-hum seriousness or unable to get the joke. The truth is, the joke’s on you.

The guerilla mockumentary style that Baron Cohen employs is anything but a new subgenre. In fact, it’s been done many times over and often better than any of Baron Cohen’s forays into the model. But Baron Cohen has become the poster boy most often and most easily associated with the genre, in the same fashion filmmakers like Michael Moore represent documentary film for the masses at large. In fact, Brüno is largely a film that prays on the very idea of what’s in fashion, discracing the mere idea of coveting the latest have-to-have. Bruno is introduced as the former host of an Austrian fashion show whom, after fashioning a suit made of Velcro that promptly ruins a runway show, is blacklisted and finds his fame revoked. “For the second time in a century,” he somberly narrates, “the world has turned on Austria’s greatest man, just because he tried something new.”

It’s a brutal line, and Baron Cohen’s acid tongue is all the more appreciated as a sporadic reminder of why we loved him in the first place. Because if Brüno does anything, it’s make us question the man behind the character, if there is one. After all, the only thing that separates Baron Cohen from his more un-PC counterpart is Brüno’sunintentional disrespect as opposed to Cohen's staged antics. Aside from that, both men are very much the same.

It’s hard to pinpoint what it is exactly about Brüno that prohibits it from rising toBorat-worthy acclaim. Some have cited the film’s lack of clear, discernable structure, but the issue is really the opposite: the problem lies in that desire for structure at all. While Borat would use its titular character as the center of the narrative, the film’s real goal was to expose the underbelly of current American culture. That rampant desire to unveil America's true sensual self-indulgence worked by using Borat, the character, merely as a provocateur of larger cultural discourse.

That desire to communicate larger truths is mostly, if not entirely, absent this time around. In Brüno, the center of the film is undeniably Brüno himself. And that narrative structure that is birthed as a result causes the derailment of what could have potentially been a more substantial socio-cultural commentary.

But then again, the film has no true comments to make. It attempts to be a sprawling satire of everything from the pretentious fashion world and egotistical celebrity culture to what Baron Cohen believes to be a documentation of social discomfort towards the homosexual community. There are moments of grandiose hilarity, such as when Brüno comments on the growing trend of adoptive babies being mistaken for designer accesories, but those moments are few and far between.

Instead, Brüno merely provokes in the hopes of eliciting a substantial reaction as opposed to actually working for it. The targets that Baron Cohen paints are far too easy for a filmmaker who believes himself to be perusing the depths of darkened Americana. The caricature of a gay man that Baron Cohen creates isn’t the problem here; after all, Robin Williams’ brilliant portrayal in The Birdcage and Christopher Guest’s role in Waiting for Guffman were themselves equal parts star power and stereotype.

No, the issue is what exactly was expected of these unwitting partakers in Baron Cohen’s supposed unearthing of homosexual unease? On a larger scale, the more appropriate, accurate and interesting finding will be within the theatres filled with liberal pundits who praise differences and cultural changes to any public within earshot, but still finds themselves amusingly closeted in regards to the actual practice of understanding. It’s that American hypocrisy, one of fake-tolerance, fake-charity and, most importantly, fake acceptance, that would have served as a far better bull's eye.

But that would be Baron Cohen biting the hand that feeds him, and what need does he have anymore to truly go far enough in poking fun at the very people who now clamor to fund his latest projects? He doesn’t. So he instead settles for the segments of our country where homosexual detestation is somewhere between obvious and oblivious. There is no middle ground in the Brünoverse, and there are no winners. Only a two-sided sword: either ardent discomfort towards the 'culture' that Cohen believes himself to be promoting or complete and utter acceptance of his hyper-sexualized ridiculousness – a stance that will still inevitably paint you in the dimwitted light of accepting anything with reckless disregard for crudeness or class. Brüno lacks any of that smarter edge that we know Baron Cohen can deliver. It instead banks on audiences’ fond memories of Borat’s startling cultural commentary as blind faith that his new endeavor is smarter than it actually is.