.jpg){kind=link}
My favorite moment in 'The Great Dictator' comes towards the very end, when Chaplin delivers a very moving speech. The movie is hilarious right from the start but it was that one particular scene which established its greatness. The Dictator's finest moment also comes at a similar juncture.
I am a huge fan of Borat and it remains my favorite Cohen character. It was insane and I had not seen anything like that before. His journey through US and A hoping to make Pamela Anderson his wife was shown using seemingly unrelated episodes where his ideologies clashed with American culture. Owing to their outrageous traits, his central characters are seldom intelligent. Borat's naivety was almost endearing and the 'Midnight Cowboy' reference pretty much nailed it. Next came Bruno, the fashionista who aspired to be the most famous gay Austrian since Arnold Schwarzenegger. It turned out to be 'pick-up-your-jaw-from-the-floor' level shocking. It was structured on the same mockumentary template used by Borat before that. But I think he took it a little too far. It soon stopped being funny and I saw most of it through webbed fingers.
Admiral Aladeen is someone who sleeps with Oprah Winfrey, Megan Fox, Katy Perry and even Ellen DeGeneres. He executes people at the drop of a hat, makes nukes, has female virgin bodyguards-- a little of every known dictator. He has been in power since such a young age that he hardly had a childhood. I would have been offended by how visually inoffensive the movie was had it not made up for it by Aladeen's political incorrectness, which knew no bounds. He is an anti-semite misogynist with racistic tendencies. In a particularly wacky scene, which won't come as a surprise to us Indians who have seen '3 Idiots', he helps a woman deliver her baby. After successfully doing that, he holds the baby up and says, "I am sorry, it's a girl. Where is the trash can?" There are some funny moments but many attempts at humor fall flat.
This is Cohen's most conventional film to date. The central character does travel to USA from his native country but there's a proper story this time. It couldn't have released at a better time, with dictatorships falling all around. It hits the zeitgeist and takes digs at Kim Jong-il, Ahmedinejad, Gaddafi, Hussain, Saudi kings, and even Dick Cheney. With all of his friends faltering, he becomes the symbol of hope for people who prefer dictatorship (his words, those). Comparing it to Chaplin's classic, the dictator's lookalike does not have a prominent part to play in spite of the fact that the switch-over happens fairly early. But the monologue he delivered at the end highlighting the ways of dictatorship was brilliant, nailing America as the biggest culprit of them all.