It's difficult to conceive of any other way to begin talking about Brà ¼no"" besides exclaiming ""oy vey."" The film is clearly designed to engender ambivalent responses; viewers leave the theater perfectly aware of the fact that they laughed heartily at the various exploits of the film's eponymous protagonist, but they also walk away feeling kind of... repulsed. If ""Brà ¼no"" seems to cross a certain line, it is because the film follows one plan of attack: Lay it on thick, lay it on heavy and actively flirt with an NC-17 rating, knowing full well that not even the MPAA would dare give the death sentence to a film with such surefire profit potential.
Being transgressive is not in and of itself a bad tactic. Countless masterpieces in the history of art sought to demolish (or at least call into question) sexual and ethical norms by dealing in extremes. This may seem like an absurd claim, but ""Brà ¼no"" can be read as a work of art in the depraved tradition of Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille's ""Story of the Eye"" and J.G. Ballard's ""Crash."" But those works share something in common beyond having European authors: Each demonstrates that so-called ""tastelessness"" is nevertheless a kind of taste. Can the same be said for ""Brà ¼no""?
The film seemingly needs little or no introduction. However, it's worth mentioning that ""Brà ¼no"" is the fourth film directed by Larry Charles, who has received a fraction of the attention being paid to the film's fearless star, Sacha Baron Cohen. Charles, a longtime Larry David collaborator, is already well established as a master of engineering supremely uncomfortable comic situations. While ""Borat"" certainly pushed the envelope as far as that film needed it to go, who would've imagined that the former ""Seinfeld"" and ""Curb Your Enthusiasm"" writer had in him such a deranged work of comedy?
And ""deranged"" truly is the appropriate word to use here. In one of the film's few unquestionably unscripted moments, Brà ¼no tells an Arkansan minister who counsels gay men trying to go hetero that he (the minister) has ""amazing blowjob lips."" There's no shortage of full-frontal male nudity; that the film included any female nudity at all feels like kind of a cop-out. Yet, to summarize the most insane, quasi-pornographic moments in ""Brà ¼no"" would be beside the point: The movie is principally a social problem film, bizarre as that may sound.
It doesn't take much abstraction to see that the reactions Brà ¼no provokes on his travels suggest some fairly substantial questions; indeed, the former host of ""Funkyzeit"" is like an Austrian, thong-wearing Tocqueville. But can homophobia, or more precisely American-style bigotry, be combated through such ludicrous obviousness? Can one be both subtle and obvious at the same time? Does ""Brà ¼no"" accidentally perpetuate intolerance or does it expose intolerance as something so irrational, so surreal, that in spite of all the suffering and bloodshed it fosters, one can't help but see it as a kind of sick joke? And what the hell was Ron Paul hoping to accomplish by letting the producers of ""Brà ¼no"" use footage of him referring to Brà ¼no as a ""queer""?
""Brà ¼no"" is an exercise in the art of playing along with a lengthy, extravagant gag. If it overwhelms you, then it has probably done its job. But as far as its value within the context of the ""culture wars"" is concerned, not just in the U.S. but globally, ""Brà ¼no"" simply begs more questions than its fabulous protagonist is capable of asking.
