The Dictator/独裁者

Screenshots:

This movie must be a favor of the political-allegory moviegoers. The subtitle of "In Memory of Kim Jong il" at the opening of the movie has clearly showed the entire framework of the whole movie, followed in the rest of the movie by lots of nonsense kuso ironical jokes.

The movie's ironical jokes including all aspects of world-wide politics, far more than ridiculous phenomenon suggested by the subtitle of "Kim Jong il" in its opening. For example, the so many absurd stuff happening in a dictatorship in the movie would not be strange to the audience who are familiar with China and North Korea. And the movie thinks deeper; it even considers the drawbacks of American politics. The climax of the movie lies in the lines cited below about the criticism to the American political reality.

There are also many satires to China, including Chinese people's height, "China is a democracy too", sexual orientation, poor English, making immoral money, etc.

This movie is commendable, as there is not a usual happy-ending although it inevitably adopts the routine of "love rescue a dictator". The ending part makes the audience understand the fragility of democracy and the stubbornness of dictatorship.

For those Hollywood fans, you can tell stars like Megan Fox and Edward Norton in the movie. Of course here they just showed up.

Quote:
General Aladeen: Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1% of the people have all the nation's wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes. And bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free, but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones. You could torture foreign prisoners. You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group, and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests.

Performance impression:
Director: Larry Charles
Writer: Sacha Baron Cohen, Alec Berg, David Mandel, Jeff Schaffer
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Megan Fox, Edward Norton, Larry King, Anna Faris

本片肯定是政治讽喻电影观众的大爱。电影开头的“In Memory of Kim Jong il”已经旗帜鲜明地亮出了电影的整个框架，并由此开始，展开了全片无节操无底线的各种讽刺。

本片讽刺的范围极广，远未局限于片头所提示的Kim Jong il之类的独裁者题材，而是广泛涉及到世界上的政治生活的方方面面。譬如独裁国家的各种荒唐事，熟悉中国和北韩的观众对此会一点也不陌生。而电影的思考不至于此，甚至还反思了美国政治中的种种弊端。电影的高潮部分就出在上文所引用的台词对美国政治现实的批评上。

对中国的讽刺也多的是，包括中国人的身高，“中国也是个民主国家”，性取向，糟糕的英文水平，只会赚钱的暴发户心态等等。

更为难能可贵的是，虽然本片也不可避免地采用了“爱情拯救独裁者”这样俗套的套路，不过本片并没有通常意义上的大团圆结局，而是让大家看到了民主的脆弱和独裁政治的顽固。

熟悉好莱坞大片的观众，还能看到Megan Fox和Edward Norton之类大牌的身影，当然，在本片里，他们都是来打酱油的。