James looks at Sacha Baron Cohen’s newest film, and how it stacks up against the past.

As you may know from our podcasts, I am a fan of the man who plays The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen, a man who also produced and wrote the film. Cohen is best known in North America for two other films in which he starred, co-wrote and co-produced: 2006’s sleeper hit/quote factory Borat, and 2009’s general letdown/vehicle for yelling penises Bruno. While Cohen has been in other films, it is these that he is most connected with by a wide margin. Bruno and Borat are movies that Cohen seems to have held a lot of control over, is the star of, and seems to stay in character as each respective role for months at a time. He attends red carpet events and appears on talk shows in full costume, maintaining the respective personality and accent without ever winking at the camera or acknowledging the gag, something that continued in promoting The Dictator.

Cohen did the media rounds deep in character as General Admiral Aladeen, oppressive egomaniacal leader of the fictitious country of Wadiya. The marketing campaign for The Dictator appeared similar to that of Bruno and Borat, as we saw Cohen/Aladeen hijack public events and turn them into press for his movie, this time by ‘accidentally’ spilling, “Cremated remains of Kim Jong-Il,” on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars. Everything looked the same as Cohen ramped up for the release of his next film, and judging by the trailers, we were in for a similar product. Like Bruno and Borat, The Dictator looked to be a movie about a spotlight-loving, self-centred, accented foreigner who comes to America, finds love where he least expects it and learns a lesson. Comparisons to the other two films were inevitable in the lead-up to The Dictator’s release. After many of us saw the film, the comparisons kept coming… but were unfavourable. The general consensus of his earlier work seems to be that Borat was great and Bruno was less so. Most people feel The Dictator continued this downward trend, at least if sites like Rotten Tomatoes are to be believed. The consensus assessment of his most recent work is correct* even though it had me laughing quite hard at times, even on the second viewing. The major and often noted flaw of The Dictator is its inconsistency, causing the aggregate review on Rotten Tomatoes to refer to the film as ‘wildly uneven,’ a criticism with which I must agree. While I would recommend the movie (to a certain type of person), the truth is that it does not stack up to Bruno or Borat.

*Which is not always the case for Cohen’s work: Bruno remains a thoroughly underappreciated, clever film. 

The Dictator will be lumped in with those two movies (and any other similar movies Cohen releases in the future) in retrospect, but there is another movie that serves as a better companion piece: Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film The Great Dictator, in which he satirizes the comedic well that is Adolf Hitler. This film obviously informed Cohen’s work, as you can tell by the fact that the title of Cohen’s film does not attempt to distance itself from Chaplin’s. In fact, at a climactic point in The Dictator, Aladeen is called “The great dictator,” a term he gladly accepts. While the marketing and main character of The Dictator was similar to Borat and Bruno, the narrative has much more in common with The Great Dictator than either of those. Both Chaplin and Cohen’s dictator films have the following in common:

• The lead actor plays both a dictator and his doppelganger.
• The dictator and his country are fictitious but are clearly meant to represent a real situation (Chaplin: Hitler/Germany, Cohen: Gaddafi/Libya).
• A love story begins when a female stranger saves the main character from a physical confrontation with authorities and begins to protect him.
• A case of mistaken identity occurs, and no one believes the dictator is the dictator after he is replaced by his double.
• The nation the dictator oppressed eventually becomes free and democratic in the final scene.
• Neither film’s promotional cycle was able to depict Ryan Seacrest as anything less than a genuinely likeable dude.

(Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I would be spoiling The Great Dictator. I feel like the 72 year window I left should give you enough time… at this point, your own laziness is to blame.) Also, the most famous thing about that movie is a giant spoiler about the ending I just mentioned: a speech. When the Jewish barber switches places with the dictator that has been oppressing him and his people (both played by Chaplin), the barber finds himself at a rally that he must speak in while in disguise. The speech before him promotes the subjugation of Jews and the dangers of free speech. In order to remain incognito, the Jewish barber should say something similar but can’t bring himself to and instead delivers a speech containing his honest thoughts on equality.

The speech is one of Chaplin’s most famous moments, noted for its direct address of the audience and for its timing, as the film predates America’s entrance into World War II and the realization of just how horrendously the Jewish people were being treated in Nazi-occupied countries. The speech is even more poignant than Chaplin knew at the time, as the true nature of the concentration camps were not known at this point. As I watched The Dictator in 2012, I knew Cohen would mimic this iconic moment with a speech of his own. It too occurs near the end of the film and replicates the format: it’s several minutes long, focuses solely on our lead and seems to be aimed at the audience much more than any characters within the film. Cohen’s version of the speech consists of Aladeen sincerely trying to convince other nations of the world to change from democracy to a dictatorship. He lists benefits of his form of government including rigged elections, racist legal policies, media conglomeration, government spending that benefits the rich and ignores the poor, and several other things. The point of the speech is to point out that these awful things that sound like they’d only fit in an oppressive dictatorship, but are common practice in America. In isolation, the criticism is effective but, just as the humour throughout the rest of the film is scattered and imprecise, the effectiveness of the speech is watered down by the jumbled narrative that surrounds it. Aladeen is entirely sincere in what he says and does not understand the satire in the way the audience is required to. After listing all these things that an evil dictator really would enjoy, he is about to declare Wadiya a dictatorship forever. He then notices Zoey, his new American ultra-liberal love interest, in the audience and how she has reacted to his speech. He recalls that he initially disliked Zoey but grew to love her, which Aladeen inexplicably equates with democracy, and while democracy has its flaws (armpit hair, for one), is really the best way to run a country. Within the story, however, this makes no sense. Aladeen’s speech functioned as satire for the audience because he genuinely believes what he is saying. This inconsistency does not seem to be one of character growth but narrative convenience, as Aladeen truly doesn’t understand how his words are being taken. While Chaplin’s speech is consistent with his Jewish barber’s character up until this point, Aladeen’s speech is odd and out of place when placed in context. It seems as though Cohen wished to emulate Chaplin with this direct address but its muddled nature makes it less effective. His criticism is not of dictators, but rather abuse of power in democracies and crony capitalism.

Most of the laughs in the movie come at the expense of the self-delusion of dictators, yet the target seems a pointless one to take aim at. The movie begins with a dedication to Kim Jong-Il (Aladeen’s former tennis doubles partner) and while he was replaced with his son, the picture of the deceased reminded me not just about that particular North Korean dictator having passed but the era of dictators passing. Of course there are some dictators left, and perhaps there might always be a few, but with the death of Kim Jong-Il, Muammar Gaddafi (the main inspiration for Aladeen), Saddam Hussein, the de-seating and imminent death of Fidel Castro and the continuing pleasant surprise of the Arab Spring, the optimist inside me feels like the dictator is a smaller and smaller part of our world. While Chaplin was ahead of his time, warning against the logical conclusions of Hitler’s mentality, which were unknowingly already being carried out, Cohen seems to be a few years behind. But perhaps Cohen was onto something with this delayed criticism, and eventual change of targets. Making jokes about dictators runs dry at about the 80 minute mark and the last bit of satire, the most direct and pertinent, is on the West, on democracy, on ourselves, that if we’re running out of these lampoonable enemies, it’s our turn to become better people.