Brazil (1985)
Terry Gilliam has a warped mind. We all knew he was a tad
bizarre when we saw his animation on Monty Python's Flying
Circus in the 1960's, but this is the film that really
separated him from the Python pack and established him as not only
one of the greatest directors of our times, but as an
intellectual, cryptic and bizarre individual.
Brazil is a black, black, BLACK comedy set in an
alternate reality or the future (the film cryptically says in the
beginning 'Somewhere in the 20th century') probably in England.
The world is ruled by 'The Ministry' which serves as a place where
everything is ultra-organized and super efficient. But everyone
seems to be happy because everything is convenient.
Every room has little televisions and behind the walls are tons
of tubes and wires. But things keep breaking and can't be fixed
because you need a billion forms to even walk out of the office to
go and fix it up (sounds like present-day New York City).
Our hero is the daydreaming Sam Lowry, a low-level government
worker who has fantasies of flying and saving a beautiful woman
trapped in a cage. This dream sequence is shown intermittently in
the film.
His mother, Ida, is a filthy rich woman who dines with her
superficial friends, gets bizarre face-lifts from Dr. Jaffe - the
coolest effect in the film, by the way - and wants her son to be a
high-level worker with an office and benefits and the whole nine
yards. But Sam seems content with his dreams. It seems everyone
wants him to wake up to reality and be shallow like everyone else.
The plot of the film is set in motion when a government worker
accidentally screws up an arrest form and gets the wrong man. The
police break in and begin a hilariously ridiculous arrest scene,
break all the windows, bust up the apartment above theirs and put
a sack cloth over their man - Mr. Buttle.
The scene is handled perfectly, with satirical comedy, as the
family is distraught and confused by what is happening and the big
cheese walks in and coldly gives her forms to sign ('This is your
receipt, and this is my receipt for your receipt.'). We then meet
Sam who has to sort this mess out for his nervous and slightly
incompetent boss, Mr. Kurtzman.
But he is distracted because on his way to work one day, he
sees a woman who is a dead ringer for the woman in his dreams. She
turns out to be a butch truck driver and alleged-rebel, Jill
Layton, who wants nothing to do with him but is somewhat drawn by
his Kafkaesque ways of wooing her ("I love you...er, er, in
my dreams I love you!").
Sam also gets into the rebellion thanks to an encounter with a
renegade air-conditioner repairman (Get that for a rebel!), Harry
Tuttle, who was the man the Ministry were looking for in the
beginning and who quit the government because of too much
paperwork. His interception of a phone call when Sam's air
conditioning dies winds him in a lot of trouble with the Ministry
of Works, represented by two weird repairmen, one being Spoor.
Sam ends up taking the big promotion his mother set up for him
just so he can track down this Jill Layton easily, but finds
himself overwrought with even more paperwork and a tiny,
claustrophobic office where he shares a desk with a bizarre man
named Lime. In possibly the best scene in the film, he has a
Chaplin-esque war over who gets the majority of the desk with
Lime.
His boss is a quick-talking Mr. Warren, who shows him to his
office and yells at him for having a messy desk since all he's
doing is becoming obsessed with Jill.
The film is a plunge into the deepening insanity of a man who
is having a war between his dreams and the reality of a burdensome
world which is too efficient for its own good.
Soon everyone has turned against him, including his best
friend, Jack (a memorably menacing Michael Palin). And by the end,
he has won - he is totally numb and lives inside his mind, flying
in the clouds with his dream girl and humming the cool Latino song
Brazil.
The film is deeply satirical, almost as much as what seems to
be its big inspiration, 1984. For one thing, everyone but the
rebels and Sam are superficial twits. In one scene, he attends his
mother's party ('Simply everyone is here!') and meets some of the
weirdest people.
There is also a running gag about plastic surgery - his mother
has been getting it and as the film goes on she's getting younger
and younger. Meanwhile, her one friend has been getting
complications to her complications to her complications and by the
end, is wrapped like a mummy being pushed in a wheelchair by her
shallow daughter (one scene, he meets her while she's lingerie
shopping, prompting what may be the funniest joke in the
film).
And the end prompts a huge action sequence which is set into
motion after a frightening torture sequence where Sam is strapped
into a metal chair in the middle of a huge dome. There are many
explosions in the film since there are terrorists who are always
trying to get people to realise how horrible society is but
they're too wrapped up in things to even notice.
In once scene, Sam has lunch with his mother at a fancy
restaurant and in the middle of the meal, an explosion takes place
but they don't even look and the Maitre De sets up a block
and has the orchestra keep playing.
Brazil also features several brilliant tracking shots.
The most menacing one is when Sam is strapped down before the
torture sequence and the camera pulls back from his face to show
how small he is in the dome. Another one - the best one - shows an
office full of people running around and the camera quickly zooms
from the back up to the front with people running in front if the
camera but never hitting it and then zooms right up to Ian Holm.
This is possibly one of the best films of the 1980's and one of
the most cryptically brilliant films ever made.
Terry Gilliam's image of a superficial society where dreams
have become scarce is perfectly done the way he wanted it, even
though he had to fight a company who wanted to manufacture it for
the masses, even though it's more of a cult film nowadays. But
never has Terry Gilliam's direction been more on target. He
perfectly targets who he wants to get and makes the film hilarious
if not totally bizarre. Indeed, this film deserves multiple
viewing just to get everything.
The Oscar-nominated script is wonderfully biting. It pokes fun
at everything and contains some of the most clever lines ever. It
also has some of the most eccentric characters in all of cinematic
history. Besides which, it's damn cool.
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