Brazil

Sam Lowry works within the huge ministry of information in a near-future world of bureaucracy. A simple administration error leads to the death of an innocent man. Lowry finds himself drawn into a world where he is forced to go against the admin world that he works in with devastating results.

This is one of Gilliam's best films (the other being 12 Monkeys). His nightmare vision is complete with wonderful visual touches - some inspired, some very unnerving in their originality. This satire on the world of bureaucracy gone mad has some wonderful elements that don't seem too farfetched - tiny offices, never-ending paperwork, a government so keen to cut costs that people who are arrested are forced to fund their own defence etc. The dream scenes and the romance don't sit too easily beside this element but they help add to the hallucinatory effect of the whole film.

The feeling of paranoia runs wild through the film. Everything in it symbolises the uselessness of trying to work against a unbeatable system and the pointlessness of individual effort - witness Tuttle eventually overcome by the "paperwork" he once resisted. The only problem with the film is that the plot is mostly rubbish, at first it's hidden but in the middle section and the end the holes become obvious.

The cast is mostly excellent despite forced to work with very weird characters. Pryce is brilliant as the quiet bureaucrat pushed into a nightmare by his dreams, although Kim Greist is dull as the focus of his dreams, Jill. The rest of the cast consists of a range of extended cameos including Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Bob Hoskins and an excellent Robert De Niro as a guerrilla heating engineer.

The studio bosses wanted an upbeat happy ending to help sales - basically the final 45 seconds had to go. However Gilliam stuck by his guns and produced a film that is visually inspiring whilst being depressingly based in the real world - right up till the final credit has rolled. "Has anyone seen Lowry?" - everyone should.

I have read a lot of understandably negative reviews of the movie 'Brazil.' Brazil(in its proper form) is a long film at well over two hours, it has many cutaways to dream sequences that are only loosely related to the rest of the film, and the narrative story is not always the driving force of the film which many people find confusing. With all these things going against it, Brazil is clearly not a film for everyone.

All that being said, Brazil is my very favorite movie. Those things previously described as reasons that some people will dislike the movie are the very reasons I love it. The story is both simple and complex depending on how you look at it, and this kind of paradox is what makes for great art. There, I did it! I used the 'A' word, and not lightly. Brazil is an art film, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Sam Lowry(Jonathan Pryce) is our hero, an unambitious bureaucrat within the ranks of the Ministry of Information. The only place he is willing to be more than a drone is in his dreams where he is some sort of angelic knight fighting to save his dream girl. While running an errand for work, Sam comes face to face with a woman who is the very image of the dream girl, and his life is forever changed when he surrenders his tranquil unambitious life in the attempt to pursue the woman.

This movie is less about the story than it is about the atmosphere in my opinion. Terry Gilliam is a visual genius, and this movie marks his peak(so far) in producing a visually stunning film, with due apologies to Adventures of Baron Munchausen and 12 Monkeys which are beautiful in their own rights. The oppression of the bureaucratic life is felt by anyone who watches this film, and the freedom experienced in the dreams is a fantastic counterpoint. This film does a wonderful job of evoking emotional responses for me, and I suspect for most of the fans of the film as well.

The film can be viewed at many different levels of complexity, from fairly simple to fully allegorical. The simple view would be that the movie is about the dreams we create to escape our dull lives, and the potentially disastrous results of pursuing them in waking life. Symbolically the film can be interpreted as a vicious attack on the status quo as an impersonal, consumer/beauty oriented beast that is upheld by a draconian adherence to regulations and invasive public policy. There are many other ways to see it, most of which are probably unintended, but certainly completely valid.

The best part about Brazil is that it is absolutely hilarious. Jonathan Pryce shows remarkable aptitude for physical comedy. The dialogue is as funny as any movie you'll ever see, though the humor is very dry, and often so subtle that you might not get a joke until a minute after it has passed. There are the occasional tidbits of out loud guffaws one would expect from a script that was partly written by Tom Stoppard, but there is not a constant barrage of this material.

Brazil is a very cerebral film, so if you are thinking, "What does cerebral mean?" you can probably skip it. Anyone who expects to have a story clearly spelled out for them, and done so in a concise manner with little background interference will hate Brazil. Brazil is a film for those who want texture, emotional involvement and some sort of deeper meaning.

Brazil is my favorite movie, but it is clearly not for everyone!

In the mid 1990s, when I was teaching film studies to BTEC media students, I chose to show them 'Brazil'. A brilliant choice I thought, with so much to discuss. They pretty much all hated it!

Despite that experience, I still think Brazil is terrific and has much to say about modern life - even though at times it can be hard work.

The plot? Well, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a lonely office worker in a desperately dull job by day, and a romantic escapist dreamer by night. He survives in a dystopian rules-based society (think Orwell's 1984) until a simple clerical error puts his life at risk. All around him is broken, confusing chaos until he meets the girl of his dreams - could she be his escape from his oppressive world?

His workplace, his home, and the characters he meets are completely bonkers - nothing is normal or works as it should. The entire film is mad, unsettling, brutal and creatively brilliant.

There are many fine cameos in the film to enjoy, including Bob Hoskins as an eccentric cooling system repair technician, Robert De Niro as a competing freelance repair technician stroke terrorist (!), and Michael Palin as a benevolent boss turned torturer.

My only criticism of the film is that it is perhaps a tad long - it is such an assault on the senses that perhaps a shade under 2 hours would've been easier to digest. But any faults are forgiven as this is such an out there, brave and hallucinogenic film with so many memorable, funny and disturbing moments.

Difficult and brilliant in equal measures and certainly a recommended watch if you want something out of the ordinary - I only hope you'll enjoy it more than my students did.

Regarding the symbolism in Brazil, of course that's the point. Lowry's dreams are not all that unique. They are a result of the regimented world he lives in. Look at all of our modern films: the two dominant characters are the rebel and the ordinary joe living a mundane life who somehow escapes from it or begins to do outrageous things.

(That's why I hated Titanic, well, partially. Rose is breaking out of her supposedly constricted life. It's propaganda. It makes it appear that the "freedoms" we have now are exactly what we need in order to escape from the restriction of prejudices and ignorance. Rose tied herself into the ever-growing strait-jacket of modern political myths. But in order to glorify those myths Cameron had to denigrate our past and all that it stood for, making its adherents look like chauvinistic fools. The person I know who liked Titanic the most liked it for that reason - she wanted to escape from her own life and envied Rose. But such people always stop there. They live in their fantasies and never stop to investigate why they feel their lives must be escaped from.)

Another note about the samurai he fights is that it continued to suddenly disappear. Lowry initially didn't know what he was fighting, for one. There really is no definitive enemy to fight. We are boxing shadows. It is a system which has no heart or kill point. That's part of the frustration, particularly for those who can't think abstractly. Most of them lash out at "the media." They can't locate who they're fighting, and so they accept the lies.

Listen to the opening interview on the television. The terrorists are refusing to "play the game." The assumption is that they are simply jealous because someone else is "winning the game." Why play at all? Any hope of that is over though. The 60s was the last gasp of opposition and it got swallowed up. Now the nostalgia for protest is a marketing tool. Consumption is a replacement for thought. When you feel angst you go shopping. We've been convinced that our anxiety is caused by something other than what it really is. Commercials are not about self-gratification, but self-doubt.

I read an interview with Gilliam in which he said the reason he could no longer live in America is that there was an unwillingness to think about anything. In the end, you are fighting the conditioning you have received from your entire culture, in essence, fighting yourself and struggling to regain control of your own mind. Parallels between Lowry seeing his own face and Skywalker seeing the same in Return of the Jedi are illuminating.

The point that Gilliam makes in the end is that the enemy is ubiquitous yet intangible. Lowry wanted to run from it, go "far away," never realizing that you can't escape. We still think in terms of a locus of power. But Gilliam, throughout the last part of the film, continually crushed our naive hopes that somehow we can act out the fantasy that many of us may have, to get away, find the girl of our dreams and live in a trailer in a beautiful setting.

Because we have no fear of physical control, we assume that we are free. Some Americans still believe in the myth of rugged individualism. The system is built on lies and that's what Gilliam was showing. It's a "State of mind." You can't escape. The only place that you can be free is in your head. "He got away from us," as they say at the end. That's really the only hope we have left.

On a lighter note, I derive so much glee from watching Lowry's mother walk around with a boot on her head.

One of my favorite novels of all time is George Orwell's 1984, and Brazil is very much a comedic interpretation of that. Brazil shows us a hilarious exaggeration of the monotony of machine like run bureaucracy, and man's constant voyage to avoid responsibility. "That's not my department." Everyone seems to say. Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low ranking government employee. When an error leads to the execution of engineer Archibald Buttle (Brian Miller) instead of terrorist Archibald Tuttle (Robert De Niro), Sam attempts to fix this, and inadvertently becomes an enemy of the state. Read that scenario again. This is a funny movie. It's a dark comedy/political satire, and almost every joke works. The nonchalant attitude of the government depicted in the film is where a big chunk of the humor comes from. It's a very smart comedy. Honestly if you like political satire, then Brazil is one we can all enjoy together.