Brazil"It's only a state of mind." |
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Rating: ***** |
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Age restriction?Contains some violence and some disturbing imagery. We recommend that this is not really suitable for pre-teens. |
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The details of how Ratings, Age Limits, Categories and the Top 100 List are created are explained on the Movies page. |
LinksWe recommend you start with these two sites: FAQ - The official FAQ on Brazil. Brazil - nice fan site with that essential info you're looking for. |
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Brazil (1985) |
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This is Terry Gilliam taking "1984" to a new level. A futuristic, 21st century society where bureaucracy has become all-pervasive. Sam Lowry {Jonathan Pryce} is part of the system, but dreams of a better life. By getting involved with a renegade "heating engineer", Harry Buttle {Robert de Niro} and a woman who looks like the girl of his dreams, Jill layton {Kim Greist} Sam finds himself being sucked into a surreal world of paper chasing gone mad. Sam drifts in and out of fantasy, but finds that trying to correct an unfortunate paperwork error makes his own life more unreal and progressively convoluted than anything we could dream. He eventually becomes the renegade himself, simply by virtue of inexorable technocratic inevitabilities. The dystopian future is marvellously created and the lyrical beauty of the dreams is wonderful. The whole film is based on a song and somehow that even makes sense. The final Director's Cut is certainly the one to see. It is not happy, and at tmes is even disturbing, and so it should be. This is not a movie to be seen just once. Indeed, Gilliam has designed it to be viewed multiple times, and you will be rewarded by multiple viewings as you see more and more in the layered detail and subtexts. If multiple viewings is something with which you have a problem then too bad. Jonathan Pryce always puts in a good performance and here it is so good that it is easy not to notice his performance as you get absorbed by the character. Robert de Niro's small supporting role is excellent and not overpowering and of course we have the ubiquitous Ian Holm stretching into a paranoid bureaucrat. There are times, such as scenes with Michael Palin and Ian Richardson and the absurdities of plastic surgery gone haywire, that you want to laugh at how ludicrous this society has become. Except Gilliam then slaps you with the reality that it is not actually funny. The making of the movie is staggeringly ironic as the mad studios try to completely change the movie. I recommend the 3-disc DVD set as being wonderfully complete and also presenting a fabulous commentary on how the studio "Love Conquers All" version of the film was made and the significance of how it was recut. Gilliam won through as the small man against the studio machine, mainly by removing the power of their threats against him - when they threatened that he would never work in Hollywood again, he said, "So what?", to which they had no answer. The ending? Well, I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it. But Gilliam himself compares the studio version of the ending to the original Blade Runner. And Ridley Scott in turn acknowledges the courage of Gilliam in fighting against that sort of nervous studio imposition, wishing he could have done the same at the time, (although he has of course now fixed Blade Runner). Brilliant film. An absolute must see for every science fiction fan, and really for everyone else as well. |
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