"Brazil" R
Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame directed a film that at the time Hollywood didn't want, a film about a corporate run society of dreary work, which they naturally felt threatened by immediately and chose not to sell right. It came out in the summer of 1985.
Eventually the film went on to win awards in 1985, as the version released in Europe was far superior to the one released in the US, and had more staying power.
After the studio battle, the film eventually was released on video and became a cult classic over the past 29 years.
When I was about 16 and saw the film on cable late at night, (around 1987), I didn't get it. The version I saw was the hacked up one missing over 20 minutes, and it had a ridiculous tacked on ending that didn't make any sense.
Last night I finally got the original print, although my friend had seen it and said that's the one tyo watch a decade ago. The glorious Criterion print included the full 142 minute version, connecting the bits that were strung together to make studio hacked nonsense decades ago.
The studio was expecting more Monty Python humor and more cute characters, having seen crowd pleasing 'Time Bandits', of which this is considered the follow up. 'Adventures of Baron Munchhausen' followed this and is not as good. Both are much more light of heart and blunt.
Brazil though is an experiment. It is a message against capitalist over work gone amok. The film is set in a future where everyone does mundane things all day, gray is the new gold, and there is a weird overlord of corporate greed with no master running things. The totalitarian state is upended only by terrorist attacks from an unknown rebel group, that is never actually caught, and so there are people randomly chosen to be picked up and killed by the police.
When one of them, a certain Buttle, is mistakenly arrested, tried and killed due to a clerical error at the ministry, (a joke on the British system actually), the day dreaming clerk hero, Sam, of the story tries to get to the bottom of it. A fly swatted off of a ceiling fell into the machinery of a printer, leading to said execution. This is actually a very dark and funny moment.
Sam dreams about escaping his endless paperwork, (a mockery of any office job in the 1980s), via a mysterious tune in his head, the theme song 'Brazil' as it has nothing to do with the nation of Brazil. He flies around as a winged knight fighting baby faced ghoul dogs, flying buildings, crashing buildings, ogres, and a giant samauri robot to save the damsel in distress.
Think 'The Meaning of Life' with '1984', but only superficially. The point in 1984 was that the socialist Big Brother state was everywhere, whereas in Brazil the mega company is not big brother so much as an evil Santa Claus like icon, which is why there are Christmas images in their only mall, every day, all the time. Holidays have lost their meaning so that only one is remembered, Christmas, which is ironically a riff on the consumerism of that holiday everywhere.
It could be the story takes place around Christmas time, but it probably is that it's the only remembered work holiday on this particular planet. I'd like to think it is another planet and no Earth, where they have adopted an insane post nuclear mismatch of consumerism and blatant neglect.
Sam is disgruntled at his nutty old Mum and her friends who all want plastic surgery to look younger. The old fussy ladies caterwaul like old maids at a fashionable party while eating disgusting paste globs disguised as caviar. Ironically one of them is so obsessed with plastic surgery that she eventually dies and melts into a soup and is placed in a coffin at a garish funeral in a church that looks more like a theater for some old grand opera house.
Sam eventually meets the real Tuttle, who is actually a freelance mechanic and possible terrorist, working to derail the air conditioning department, but two clowns from the real department destroy his flat.
Then Sam meet Jill, who happens to look like the girl in his dreams, and it appears she is a rebel also, driving a big truck and making what appears to be terrorist delivery runs in and out of the ministry regions of the city. They eventually get it on in his Mom's palace while she is away partying.
Eventually the police arrest him and take him to be interrogated, which in that society is certain death, but he imagines escaping somehow with Tuttle, through the funeral procession, only to have Tuttle then disappear into a flurry of paper at a bombing area in that garish nightmare mall.
The mother has turned into a mockery of Jill and is seen at the funeral.
The interrogation features the evil Santa, actually the old minister, who is behind the corporation.
He dreams to have escaped with Jill to a shire like glade, but then he wakes up,, still interrogated and with his head cooked from being brainwashed or getting a lobotomy.
The Hollywood ending was when they escape and roll credits. That didn't make sense.
'Sucker Punch' was ripping the whole nightmare idea off and using the ending wrong.
'12 Monkeys' is another Gilliam movie that uses a similar ending. The hero is not able to change things.
The cynical ending was head of its time. Today that's considered cool. Let's have the hero get a lobotomy.
The movie works despite itself, and shows the mundane nature of a world turned into a big overstuffed machine that is decaying. It's 1984 minus Big Brother. Hollywood hated this idea for obvious reasons.
As some have speculated, the terrorist attacks in the movie may be little more than machines breaking down and exploding, being blamed on the people. I think it's more of a metaphor. (This is really not what Gilliam had in mind).
It's actually likely the 'rebellion' which is never actually seen is all in Sam's head, like in 'Shutter Island' with the violent episodes, or 'Inception' in the dream world that seems ageless. Suppose from the moment he 'awakens' from the daydream the first time he is actually encountering hallucinations of a more exciting life. His subconscious is then recreating heroes to rescue him. He is the one in distress. (That may be actually what Gilliam had in mind).
Say after Sam attempts to right the wrong in the system and go to Mr.s Buttle, he is actually dreaming. This never happened. He never sees Jill there, or finds out about how to get her records, because a dream girl cannot be real. His promotion then may not be real. His being allowed anywhere near the master records place is evident that he's already the hero in the fantasy, and has somehow changed the mind of the machine. He hasn't.
(This logic would ignore the opening part where the police attack and Jill is briefly seen, but if this is just Sam later recanting what his friend told him happened, he might be imagining her there, as he wasn't there but his friend was).
His mother not being in the palace and later turning up as a lookalike for Jill is Freudian. It's possible that Sam wants to have a dream girl that looks like a younger version of his Mother, and which at one point Jill plays along with also. This is probably him alone in the palace just standing there imagining it. (It is probably not that he imagines his plastic surgery transformed Mum is Jill literally, or disguised as Jill, as then that scene would be even more disturbing).
The escape from the system and destruction of the ministry are clearly dreams. The movie implicitly shows this. He wakes up with his brains scrambled back in the chair in the interrogation room.
Modern dystopian novels aimed at young adults get this wrong. If you had a society regimented by an overlord, real or imagined, you are not going to win. Gilliam understood this. You are especially not going to win with you're an unskilled teenager who actually has no mental powers, or a mental patient in a hospital, 'Shutter Island', 'Sucker Punch', 'One Flew Over the Coocoo's Nest', , or an alleged dream controlling power broker 'Inception'.
Even if you could in against the totalitarian leaders and take over, you'd turn into them eventually. 'The Hunger Games' would end in complete 'Lord of the Flies' anarchy if Katniss actually dies . The only way a Hollywood ending works is if the overlord somehow decides to let them go, like in, 'The Maze Runner', or 'The Matrix'. Maybe the overseers become bored.
Although there are riffs on capitalism in it, the story also has socialist riffs and just about any riff on an all consuming society. It's as much a parody of British royals as it is consumer culture. It is also eerily like today.
People are obsessed with the technology and their mundane routines. Conspiracy and confusion fuels some of the paranoid counter culture. Anarchists are seen as heroes for some odd reason. Conservatives claim a war on religion, when they are guilty of being hypocrites, and Liberals will not admit to mistakes, generally. In the end, Orwell happened. The Internet is being watched. Fortunately, Gilliam also happened. So Big Brother has a twisted sense of humor.
Review by Adam Browne
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