Brazil (1985)
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Review #1,406 |
THE SCOOP
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro, Ian Holm, Jim Broadbent
Plot: A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state.
Genre: Drama / Sci-Fi
Awards: Nom. for 2 Oscars - Best Original Screenplay, Best Production Design
Runtime: 142min
Rating: PG13 for some strong violence
Distributor: Universal Studios
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
“Sorry,
I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork. Where
would we be if we didn't follow the correct procedures?”
I have something to confess—I didn’t like Brazil the first time I saw it, many,
many years ago. What’s with all the
freaking air ducts? That bothered
me. But I was a naïve young teenager
with false pride then. Not now. Now I would like to think that I’m a
cultivated cineaste (I hope).
This is such a terrific movie, one of Terry
Gilliam’s very best, and for some, his magnum opus. It was also the battleground for one of the
most infamous conflicts between director and studio, in this case
Universal. Reading about it pisses me
off, but Gilliam ultimately prevailed.
The easy accessibility (thankfully!) to the director’s cut, all of 142
minutes, is a stern reminder of the need to respect an artist’s vision and
craft.
Brazil stars Jonathan Pryce as
Sam Lowry, a low-level government employee who doesn’t want promotion. Robert De Niro and Kim Greist play supporting
roles as Harry Tuttle and Jill Layton respectively. Harry is a wanted renegade, appearing and
disappearing at will, fixing air ducts as cover. Jill, apparently Sam’s ‘dream' girl in his
hallucinations, is the upstairs neighbour of a family whose lives are set for
an irreversible course, thus setting the plot up for this sharp and clever
anti-totalitarian work. The less you
know about how the narrative will play out, the more the film will surprise
you.
Brazil is the second of
Gilliam's unofficial ‘Trilogy of Imagination’ (the other two are Time Bandits (1981) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)),
and certainly it is a work of great creativity and visual bravura. The dystopian production design of a city at
the brink of technological abyss—with all the unsightly air ducts, archaic buildings
and inefficient computers—is a marvel, so are the film’s surreal dream
sequences involving Sam as struggling hero and Jill as damsel in distress.
Gilliam’s film is consistently dazzling,
accompanied by the famous music theme by Ary Barroso (and its variations by
composer Michael Kamen) that gave it its title.
What’s most fascinating is how Gilliam brings a whole slew of themes to
the table, each seamlessly and effortlessly intertwined in the storytelling.
It is first a strong and hilarious anti-bureaucratic
satire; and second a critical examination of power dynamics; lastly, it also
shows us the perils of materialism and the artificiality of our quest for superficial
perfection—cue plastic surgery (that hides our ugly selves as human beings) and
administrative ping-pong (that hides the imperfections of an authoritarian
state). This is truly a sizzler!
Verdict: A sharp and clever anti-totalitarian work by
Gilliam that is consistently dazzling, be it the creative visuals, the bureaucratic
satire, or the invigorating music.
GRADE: A
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