My first draft of this review went something like this: ‘Brüno is crude, bigoted, and completely insensitive, and it would be a terrible idea for you to watch it’. I did make the concession that it was funny – the funniest film I saw last year, probably – but reckoned this an inadequate reason to watch the film in light of its total and utter tastelessness.
Some of this, I stand by. Brüno IS crude and tasteless, and it IS hilarious. But it also makes an important statement, as my editor pointed out to me, and which I can appreciate now that I’m no longer still reeling from the shock of seeing a grown man with blond highlights ask someone, quite sincerely, if their infant can operate heavy, antiquated machinery – so actually, it might be good for you to watch Brüno after all.
Story-wise, Brüno follows (supposedly) nineteen-year-old Brüno Gehard (Sacha Baron Cohen), a self-absorbed and clueless fashion reporter from Austria. When Brüno is fired from his TV show, Funkyzeit Mit Brüno (a.k.a. the most important TV fashion show in any German-speaking country apart from Germany), he moves to the United States of America to become “the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler”. In America, Brüno becomes involved in a series of increasingly bizarre situations that range from interviewing Harrison Ford to losing all but nine friends on MySpace.
At its surface, then, Brüno is a shallow, ridiculous and very funny examination of a character with questionable morals and even worse fashion sense. Beyond this, though, it’s also a deceptively thoughtful – and rather remarkable – exploration of human nature. The version of humanity exposed in Brüno is far from kind. The people Brüno interacts with are, for the most part, ordinary civilians unaware that Brüno is a character, meaning that the reactions captured in the mockumentary – from the understanding to the alarmed to the totally enraged – are people’s authentic responses to Brüno.
It goes without saying that the majority of these are extremely funny, and cement Brüno as a comedy masterpiece for which the interviewees as much as Sacha Baron Cohen are to be applauded, but they do also go further than this. Although some situations invite more sympathy for these civilians than others – I mean, how would YOU react to being confronted by a naked man-child in bondage gear trying to board your bus? – a good number of the reactions to Brüno seem comparatively absurd, and effectively lay bare the bigotry and callousness prevalent in wider society.
Take, for example, the parents and guardians who very willingly agree to endanger their children by consenting to have them operate said antiquated and heavy machinery, and the initially supportive talk-show spectators who turn against Brüno when he mentions that he’s searching for Mr Right. In all, the hostility to ‘difference’ entrenched in American society and culture – although the same may justifiably be said of the rest of the world – is undeniably present throughout Brüno. A big part of the film’s comedy, in fact, lies in this; Brüno is funny because he is so totally different from society, and his behaviour is so absurdly at odds with any standards of normalcy. Yet, it is also Brüno’s difference that positions the film to make the deceptively profound statement it makes about the terminal inescapability of hate in society.
The existence of this dichotomy in such a film necessarily draws viewers’ attention to this prevalence of bigotry, in turn inviting us to reflect on how society can and ought to change and work toward eliminating this.