It’s hard to remember the last time a low-budget comedy generated so much hype as “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” To make sense of this, one needs to understand the man behind Borat’s moustache, the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Though Baron Cohen’s satirical TV show, “Da Ali G Show” was popular both in Britain and the US, his cult status has been primarily built-up by the Internet and illegal file sharing. Baron Cohen’s mixing of fact and fiction is a reflexive commentary on the reality-TV craze. “Borat,” which is directed by Larry Charles, shows that the distinction between TV and film is breaking down. All of this makes Baron Cohen a quintessentially a 21st-century phenomenon. On a more practical level, the “Borat” film is one of the funniest and cleverest comedies in a long, long while. Part of what makes the character of Borat so goddamn funny is the multiple layering and crisscrossing of identities. As those familiar with the British show know, Borat simply wasn’t as funny when interacting with the English. For one, they tended to have less tolerance for his shenanigans. Beyond that, Baron Cohen always seemed held back and reserved with fellow Brits. As an outsider, Baron Cohen can mock and satirize Americans more thoroughly and courageously that he can his own compatriots. That indeed is the sense one gets from watching this quirky travelogue through the American heartland. For while Baron Cohen does satirize and mock racist attitudes, the comic strength of his film lies in his ability to confront us with the sheer weirdness of our country.

The paper-thin plot lets the various pranks and situations speak for themselves. Essentially, this is a road film. It follows Borat as he drives cross-country with his obese producer Azamat in search of Pamela Anderson. Along the way he learns to drive, buys a car, sings the Kazakhi national anthem at a rodeo and goes into rapture at a mega-church.

Most of the film’s humor is too damn good to give away. Some of the pranks will be familiar to devotees of Da Ali G Show, such as behaving badly at a dinner party. All the while, it’s very hard to believe your eyes and accept what Borat and his eight-person-crew get away with. (According to the production notes, Baron Cohen very narrowly escaped arrest several times during the shoot). Baron Cohen reportedly stayed in character throughout the shoot, and his commitment to the role borders on the pathological. He pushes the envelope pretty far while pushing people’s buttons ever further.

There is, however, one unforgivable scene juvenile, Tom Green-style idiocy: a sickening centerpiece that will provoke many walkouts. But aside from this, Borat does not disappoint. Like the TV series at its best, the film amuses, shocks and discomforts. The format of a feature film, allows it to gather momentum, building and building in outrageousness. At a brisk 83 minutes, there’s never a dull moment. But don’t let the short running

HAIL MARY – NEW YORKER FILMS: SRP: 29.95

    Like many films that have wound up on the Pope’s shit-list, Jean Luc Godard’s “Hail Mary “ (1985) amount to a personal statement of faith. The film, which is an allegory for the Immaculate Conception, features an often nude Mary-figure. The pope has so incensed that he broadcast a special prayer service on Italian radio to beg the Madonna’s forgiveness for the offense done to her. The controversy – to which the director remained troubled - drew crowds of protesters and audiences and made “Hail Mary” Godard’s biggest commercial success in decades. But this very debate prevented, in large part, a proper assessment of the film on its own terms. New Yorker Film’s recently released DVD can perhaps serve as a corrective and introduce a new audience to what should rightly be acknowledged as Godard’s greatest artistic success of the 1980s.
    In this meditative and abstract retelling of the virgin birth, Mary is a high school student who plays basktetball. Joseph drives a cab and picks Gabriel up from the airport. The annunciation takes place at the gas station where Mary helps her father out. We witness the disbelief of Joseph (who tries to rebound with Mary’s schoolmate, a young Juliette Binoche) and the spiritual anguish of Mary as they both struggle to accept the miracle that has been forced upon them. A parallel plot about an exiled philosopher-scientist from Czechoslovakia forms a parallel discourse on the miracle of life.  The fragments of Bach’s Matthew Passion and the Dvorak Cello Concerto provide the elegiac and spiritual soundtrack.
    Other directors have been attacked for their unorthodox interpretations of scripture, from Martin Scorsese to Kevin Smith, but Godard’s contribution is unique: by situating an ineffable mystery of faith in a contemporary and mundane context, he attempts to put a human face on a divine miracle and bring it down to a shockingly human level.

THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE – CRITERION COLLECTION: SRP: 39.95

    A dreamy succession of images unravels with deliberate ambiguity in Victor Erice’s first feature, “The Spirit of the Beehive,” recently given the increasingly common 2-disc treatment by the redesigned and increasingly prolific Criterion Collection. Tranquil and unsettling, melancholy and magical, this Spanish masterpiece is an enigmatically plotted film whose voids speak volumes.  Set in the small Castilian village of Hoyuelos, it follows two sisters, Ana and Isabel, over several days towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. The opening sequence, in which the village children sit in an improvised movie theater watching James Whale’s “Frankenstein” establishes a dreamlike conceptual framework for later glimpses into Ana’s consciousness. Convinced that she can communicate with the Frankenstein monster in nature she awaits his arrival patiently at an abandoned barn. When a wounded partisan seeks shelter there, Ana tends to him and brings him food and clothing stolen from her house. But she learns that her childish simplicity and generosity is incommensurate with the violence and irrationality of the adult world. Spirit of the Beehive makes a great companion piece to Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” another haunting film about childhood and unexplained sadness available from Criterion. It is a moody and disorienting poem about the wonder and fear of childhood. Luis Cuadrado’s fixed camera captures the details of the sisters’ life, from their opulent decaying mansion to their mushroom picking excursions, with the luminescence and clarity of a Goya painting. The delicate and barren mood also brings to mind Sven Nykvist’s equally breathtaking work for “Fanny and Alexander,” another film that deals with the dread and delight of childhood.  The metaphysical weight of emptiness and silence recalls the beautiful desolation of Louis Malle’s seldom-seen “Black Moon” and Tarkovsky’s “Stalker.” It remains puzzling that in the three decades since “The Spirit of the Beehive,” Erice has only made two other – lesser – films. But then again, “Beehive” is a one-of-a-kind film that one savors in a state of childhood wonder.          

Metropolitan Opera
October 21, 2006 at 1:30pm

It’s hard not to have noticed the Metropolitan Opera’s new facelift. In the hopes of improving the company’s image and making opera a more vital part of New York culture, the Met’s new general director, Peter Gelb, has initiated a slew of new strategies to draw a wider, more diverse crowd. The new life that Gelb’s changes have given the house is seen in everything from the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery, which displays newly-commissioned works by artists like John Currin and Richard Prince, to the $20 rush tickets, to the redesigned playbills. It is, therefore, a gentle irony that the second production the house unveiled this season was a revival of an opera not seen here in over 16 years, Ponchielli’s melodramatic behemoth La Gioconda. 

Once among the most popular operas in the repertoire, Gioconda has not aged well. It is the sin qua non of operatic excess, the Italian response to French Grand Opéra, the popular 19th-century operatic genre that lost out historically to Verdi and Wagner. As befits an opera of excess, there are six leads (one for each voice register). The four acts are crammed full of goodies: a bloodthirsty mob, arson, poisoning, a prince in disguise, a blind mother, murder, terrible curses and suicide. Don’t think too hard or rationally about what’s going on: chances are you’ll get hung up on the glaring holes in plot, the inconsistencies and the preposterous coincidences.

On Saturday afternoon, Betrand de Billy led the final performance of the season with the soprano Violeta Urmana in the demanding title role. Ms. Urmana gave a vocally powerful and musically accurate account but she sounded tired (this was her seventh time singing the taxing role this month). Her forceful voice held her in good stead throughout the afternoon, although she had a shrill upper register and was shouting occasionally. She delivered most satisfyingly in the demanding third act with the aria “Suicido” and all the subsequent histrionics. Sharing the stage with her were five well-match singers. Irina Mishura lent a heavy dose of pathos to her hammy role of the blind mother, La Cieca. She sang with an expressive, weeping voice that was enhanced by a piteous quiver. The other mezzo, Olga Savova did not disappoint either. Her Laura was both noble and vulnerable, especially in the Act II jealously duet with Urmana; and her clarion voice held up well over the course of a long afternoon.

The men weren’t so bad either. As the conniving Barnaba, the spy who is in love with La Gioconda, baritone Frederick Burchinal exuded puffed-up vanity and evil glee in every scene, projecting easily with wild and demented glee. Eduardo Villa sang Enzo, the prince-in-disguise who scorns Giaconda’s love, with such power, ease and vocal virtuosity that it’s a shame the Met doesn’t employ him more often. Perhaps to conserve his voice, he softened his beautiful tenor somewhat, especially in the first act. But whatever he lacked in volume he more than made up for in expression and vocal purity. Throughout the afternoon, he sang with warm, lush tones. One high point was Act II’s “Cielo e mar,” which earned him generous applause. Rounding out the men was the Georgian bass Paata Burchuladze, in a stern and foreboding account of the vengeful Don Alvise, who poisons his wife and reveals the murder with much flourish during a masquerade.

That masquerade also contains the opera’s most famous music, “The Dance of the Hours.” Christopher Wheeldon, a resident choreographer for the New York City Ballet, provided new choreography for the ballet that was immortalized in Disney’s Fantasia. I am sorry to report that Mr. Wheeldon’s interpretation does not include alligators, hippos, elephants or any other wildlife. That said, this 10-minute ballet was far and away the best dancing I’ve seen at the Met. As interpreted by two non-Met dancers - ABT’s Danny Tidwell and Letizia Guiliani from the Birmingham Royal Ballet - it put previous balletic interludes (I’m thinking particularly about 2003’s Les Troyens) to shame. Mr. Wheeldon’s choreography was simple, with a corps de ballet fluttering around the two principles as they leapt into each other’s arms, pirouetted and twirled across the stage. It was simple, effective and elegant. And the audience soaked it up. 

Margherita Wallmann’s production is forty years old and looks it. Yet the 2-D storybook sets of Venice seem appropriate. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine this relic of grand opera gone mad in an edgier production. Even if the themes it treats are fundamentally human, the histrionics of plot, dialogue, character and score make Gioconda hard to take seriously. Still, there’s little denying what a gripping spectacular entertainment it is. The excess here makes one agree that sometimes more is more: more principles, more peripateias, more raw emotion, more thrills and chills. It’s doubtful that Gioconda will become a perennial favorite once again, but let’s hope we don’t need to wait till 2022 for the next revival.

In this anniversary year for Mozart and Shostakovich, there is another musical luminary who is being celebrated: the minimalist pioneer Steve Reich, who turned 70 on Oct. 3. He’s also the only one of the bunch who can take part in the festivities.

Once an obscure name whose music was performed at art galleries and lofts, Reich is now having his 70th birthday celebrated throughout city this October at venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Though Reich has never gained the popularity of Philip Glass-whose own work, especially early on, was influenced by Reich-the power and originality of his eclectic oeuvre is unparalleled. After dance performances at BAM and master classes at Carnegie earlier this month, Reich was feted on Saturday night in a program of three masterpieces performed by the ensembles for whom they were composed.

Wearing his signature baseball hat, Reich stood at the back of a packed house for the first half of Saturday’s concert at Stern Auditorium. Looking a miraculously young 70, Reich hovered over the equalizer with the techies as they supervised the equipment during two works that fuse live performance with prerecorded sound.

Jazz guitar legend Pat Metheny was on hand to interpret 1987’s “Electric Counterpoint,” which he premiered at the BAM Next Wave Festival. Bathed in a spotlight that created a halo above his puffy dirty-blond hair, he strummed and picked his way through a 15-minute work, which pits an acoustic guitar against a prerecorded tape of the artist performing on multiple guitars and electric basses. The soloist provides contrapuntal melodic patterns to the recorded material. In the hands of a less skilled performer, the plethora of interlocking rhythmic and melodic patterns might threaten to subsume the soloist. But Metheny kept abreast of the tape and retained his supremacy throughout. The tape cushioned Metheny’s eclectic style, which alternately sounded bluesy, Celtic, Western, and even baroque.

The ever-popular Kronos Quartet assumed the stage for the Grammy-winning “Different Trains,” which is scored for string quartet and tape. The melodic material for the piece is derived from speech patterns. The piece reflects Reich’s experience journeying cross-country in the 1940s, which is pitted against the experience of European Jews who were deported to concentration camps around the same time. The voice samples, from interviews with Reich’s former governess, Holocaust survivors, and a train conductor, generate the material that is explored by the instruments. The tape includes fragments of these interviews repeated over and over amid recorded train noises and three prerecorded string quartets. The fragmentary and droning qualities of speech and music combine. Sensitive to this disconcerting jumble of sounds, the Kronos players convincingly imitated both voices and train noises, including the hum of a steam locomotive and sirens, in this haunting and elegiac work.

After intermission came Reich’s monumental “Music for 18 Musicians.” This hour-long piece, which Reich spent two years working on, was among the composer’s first forays into large-scale composition. Steve Reich and Musicians, the ensemble that Reich formed in the early ’70s to perform his works, were joined by soloists from Synergy Vocals. The eclectic musical force included clarinets, strings, pianos, and assorted percussion. Reich himself performed at one of four pianos, and briefly migrated to the marimbas.

The pianos and percussion maintain the pulsating rhythm of the piece throughout, while the sopranos, altos, and clarinets each hold a note for as long as possible. The overlapping patterns created by the “breathing” of the soloists result in a wavy, perpetual-motion-like effect. Amid the steady tempo of the percussion and pianos, they add to the piece’s meditative and trance-like effect. The piece has a tight harmonic structure in which a cycle of 11 chords (heard at the work’s beginning) receives a thorough and inventive deconstruction. There were many bobbing heads in the audience amid the metronomic violin and chimes, and at times the music sounded practically religious. The performative aspect added another dimension to the experience, with the ritual-like spectacle complimenting the auditory one: the methodical tapping of the percussionists, the clarinetists growing red in the face, and the posture of the soloists, chanting perpetually into their microphones.

When the final notes died away, the entire audience leapt to their feet in wild applause, which only increased as Metheny and the Kronos Quartet came on stage for a final bow. The loudest applause, of course, was reserved for Reich himself.