Brazil (movie)

Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers.

The film stars Jonathan Pryce as Sam Lowry, a low-level bureaucrat whose vivid dream fantasies intersect with terrorist intrigue when his dream girl, played by Kim Greist[?], turns up as the neighbor of a man arrested as a terrorist on account of a typographical error. Robert De Niro has a small but memorable role as a renegade heating technician.

Set "somewhere in the 20th century", the world of Brazil is a gritty urban hellhole patched over with cosmetic surgery and "designer ducts for your discriminating taste". Automation pervades every facet of life from the toast & coffee machine to doorways, but paperwork, inefficiency, and mechanical failure are the rule. A mysterious wave of terrorist bombings is met by an increasingly powerful Ministry of Information, whose jackbooted thugs never admit to arresting and torturing the wrong man for information.

Universal[?] chairman Sid Sheinberg[?] and Gilliam disagreed over the film; Sheinberg insisted on drastically reediting the film to give it a happy ending, which Gilliam resisted vigorously.

The movie was shelved by Universal, but Brazil promptly won the Directors Guild of America's "best movie" award. That, coupled with a full- page Variety ad taken out by Gilliam questioning Sheinberg, shamed Universal into finally releasing Gilliam's version in 1985.

Upon release, however, Brazil performed poorly. Audiences were confused, and critics hated it. Nonetheless, the film remains a cult favorite, particularly among fans of Gilliam. In tone and setting, Gilliam's later reality-twisting Twelve Monkeys resembles Brazil. It has also been compared to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Sheinberg's edit, the so-called "Love Conquers All" version, was shown on network television, and is available as an extra on the DVD release of the film.

Gilliam refers to this film as the second of a trilogy of movies, including Time Bandits (1981) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989). He notes that the three films share a related theme of the struggle for imagination and free thinking in a world constantly suppressing such ideas.

Unfortunately the plot has some major confusing points, the most notable being the instant hate-to-love transition made by the female lead for the hero Sam Lowry.

With its complex, subtle, and confusing plot, packed with jokes and ideas, Brazil is a movie to be watched several times. It is also so packed with visual detail that it helps to see it on a large screen.

Potential Spoilers: Points to Consider after Several Viewings

• So, when does Sam lose contact with reality? Does he undergo a lobotomy or is his final escapism merely a consequence of severe torture inflicted by a former good friend? Are daydreams good or do they blur the distinction between fantasy and reality for everybody?
• Do the terrorists exist at all, or is it just a coverup for the incompetence of Central Services (et al) when all the technology fails? Perhaps the bombings are staged to justify the information department's existence.
• Does Tuttle exist at all, or he just another of Sam's daydream fantasies? In fact, isn't it really Sam himself who tampers with the air conditioning? No one else really meets Tuttle.
• Is the hate-to-love transition inconsistent, or is it that Sam struggles a lot to prove himself worthy to her? When this love-transition finally comes, is it not exactly where Sam loses touch with reality completely?
• Notice the society portayed. Companies and government all meld together. Their technology level is quite high, but all the wrong things are automated, and they are extremely poorly designed. (They put energy into designer ducts, when no one really wants those ducts at all. Computers and phones are also beautiful examples, half modern, half Victorian.) Due to these misdesigns (driven by a central authority), simply everybody is incompetent at what they do.
• What similarities exist between the movie and the neoliberal societies of Thatcher's Britain or Reagan's USA? After all, isn't the film contemporary to the IRA bombings in London?

External link

• IMDB entry on Brazil (http://imdb.com/Title?0088846)