If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--Brazil is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. In fact it was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek government clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. It's not a software... bug but a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets squashed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen, one Mr Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in unravelling this bureaucratic tangle, he himself winds up labelled as a miscreant. The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously screened his cut for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who named it the best movie of 1985 and virtually embarrassed Universal into releasing it. --Jim Emerson On the DVD: Brazil comes to DVD in a welcome anamorphic print of the full director's cut--here running some 136 minutes. Disappointingly the only extra feature is the 30-minute making-of documentary "What Is Brazil?", which consists of on-set and behind-the-scenes interviews. There's nothing about the film's controversial release history (covered so comprehensively on the North American Criterion Collection release), nor is Gilliam's illuminating, irreverent directorial commentary anywhere to be found. The only other extra here is the ubiquitous theatrical trailer. A welcome release of a real classic, then, but something of a missed opportunity. --Mark Walker [show more]
Terry Gilliam is not a director who makes "easy" movies. Even at his most accessible and mainstream - Twelve Monkeys springs to mind - he deliberately sets out to challenge the viewer in a way that most conventional films don't manage. You'll understand how significant it is, then, when I say that Brazil is one of his most baffling, enigmatic, and challenging movies.
It's also one of his best.
Released in 1985, the film is a surreal fable set in an indistinct future, that tells the story of a civil servant (Sam Lowry, played to perfection by Jonathan Pryce) who becomes embroiled in an increasingly convoluted and chaotic conspiracy (that begins, butterfly-effect-style, with a lowly insect being caught in a printer, then snowballs from there). Through this tale, we learn about the absurdly bureaucratic and state-controlled world in which he lives, at the same time as he becomes romantically involved with a young woman, Jill, whose face he has seen in his swashbuckling, escapist dreams.
The dreamlike quality of those sequences in which Sam "meets" Jill for the first time spills over into the rest of the movie too: everything has a heightened, exaggerated and not-quite-real feeling about it, whether it's the satirical elements (including the increasingly severe beauty treatments that Sam's mother keeps receiving to make her look younger and younger), the austereness of the government building in which Sam works, or the over-mechanised, machinery-filled apartments that we see regular people living in, amid the towering buildings that constitute the film's unnamed central city.
It's a film of both lightness and darkness. The levity comes in the form of absurd, sometimes slapstick comedy sequences that see Sam coping with the nonsensical and over-regulated nature of his everyday life. One hilarious scene sees him forced to share an office following a promotion: but instead of having two people in one room, the room is instead divided by a wall that runs straight down the middle, even though this means it runs straight through a table that both men need to use, and must therefore fight over (it's funnier than I've made it sound). Others are just flat-out odd, but at the same time endlessly inventive: the same combination that worked so well for Gilliam in his Monty Python days (and indeed his erstwhile Python collaborator Michael Palin turns up in a key role here). But the dark elements are so dark that they're jet-black - particularly when the film reaches its bitter conclusion (which I won't spoil here - all I'll say is don't go into Brazil expecting things to end well).
As well as the excellent main cast, this is a film in which acting greats like Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins and Robert De Niro show up as mere bit-part players (along with a smattering of British comedians like Nigel Planer and Jim Broadbent), providing colour and flair without ever outshining the main cast. Which would be a pretty impressive feat, given that Pryce turns in the performance of his career in his lead role here: an incredible, layered performance that ensures we both invest in him as a serious protagonist, and can laugh at him as he clowns his way through the more ridiculous trials that his life throws at him.
Finally, I have to praise the visual brilliance of Brazil, particularly when it comes to the film's design: the look of the movie was truly ahead of its time, with a hyper-real, almost comic-book aesthetic that has cast a significant influence over subsequent movies. In particular, the city exteriors here feel incredibly similar to those seen in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman - possibly due to the presence of the same cinematographer, Gilliam's frequent collaborator Roger Pratt - as well as subsequent dystopian movies like Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen and City of Lost Children.
In short, this is a fantastic-looking, well-acted and imaginatively-conceived film that challenges the tyranny of bureaucracy and celebrates the absurdity of existence, while mixing dystopian elements that would feel at home in Orwell's 1984 with unhinged comedy that could only come from the mind of someone touched with insanity like Gilliam. Unique, moving, funny: it's well worth a watch.
Ravi Nijjar
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. 'Brazil' is a Terry Gilliam's surrealistic nightmare vision of a 'perfect' future where technology reigns supreme. Everyone is monitored by a secret government agency that forbids love to interfere with efficiency. When a daydreaming bureaucrat becomes unwittingly involved with an underground superhero and a beautiful mystery woman, he becomes the tragic victim of his own romantic illusions. This offbeat fantasy blends biting humour with an unforgettable look at the delightfully dastardly tomorrow. Actors Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughan, Kim Griest & Jim Broadbent Director Terry Gilliam Certificate 15 years and over Year 1985 Screen Widescreen 1.85:1 Anamorphic Languages English - Dolby Digital (2.0) Stereo Subtitles English for the hearing impaired ; Danish ; Finnish ; Norwegian ; Swedish Duration 2 hours and 17 minutes (approx) Region Region 2 - Will only play on European Region 2 or multi-region DVD players.
In the future, a clerk at the all-powerful Ministry of Information sticks to his ideals and ends up crushed by the system in this half comedy, half horror story from former 'Monty Python' animator Terry Gilliam. Like Orwell's novel '1984', which it echoes, the future is seen from a 1940's perspective. Jonathan Pryce stars, with Robert De Niro making a cameo appearance as an excessively diligent sewage inspector.
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