Brazil
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jonathan Pryce, Katherine HelmondBrand: MCA
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 132 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-03-31
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Brazil
Movie Review: A LITTLE INCOHERENCE IS A SMALL PRICE TO PAY FOR THIS VISIONARY WORK
Summary: 5 Stars
IN A NUTSHELL:
This is a 5-Star film unlike virtually all others.
We have elements of 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Gilliam's own nightmares all compressed into a sprawling, impressionist black-comedic epic. Compressed, but still sprawling. Significant meaning is here but, like a new impressionistic painting, this still fresh statement needs careful and open-minded interpretation to find what is at its core.
WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT:
Basically, a technocrat makes a mistake which is born of the computer that basically runs things by containing all the info that leads to all the conclusions. But, mistakes happen and Jonathan Pryce, who plays Sam Lowrey, is the one who is going to try to fix it. NOT SO FAST! A man is already dead!
Yes, a bug [an insect] got into the workings of "the computer" and caused the imprisonment and death of Archibald Buttle. In fact it was Archibald Tuttle [Robert De Niro], not Buttle, that should have been apprehended. In any event, it was done without due process and Buttle dies during the torturing interrogation, of a so-called heart attack.
But, Sam Lowrey is too indoctrinated to deal effectively with the bureaucracy that has evolved into a faceless, technocratic, totalitarian state. We have Robert De Niro playing Archibald "Harry" Tuttle who occasionally explodes onto the scene like he is James Bond doing a patented Bond action scene. In reality [if there is such a thing here], Tuttle was the real target of the "mistake" that led to the death that Lowrey is trying to correct. You see, in this world, trying to fix an air conditioner correctly can make you a terrorist, even if you are employed by the government to do just that! You break with standard procedure and voila -- YOU'RE A TERRORIST.
MONEY BACK GUARANTEE:
The correction that Lowrey is trying to effect is a refund for the cost of Buttle's wrongful arrest. In essence, when you are arrested, as Buttle was, you are levied a fee to cover the costs of your arrest, and since Buttle was not supposed to be arrested, it was vital to return the fee that the government collected from his family for his arrest. Notably absent is any thought of the wrongful death of Buttle, as that was not the mistake as far as the system and the computer was concerned. Therefore, we see how Lowrey and the system are completely indifferent to the devastating impact that this "mistake" has had on Buttle's family. The problem is that they [Lowrey's dept.] have money collected by mistake and it must be accounted for and he is the agent which has been chosen to deliver the refund. This is really ridiculous stuff, but not that far off from where things in a computerized world can already be heading.
THERE'S MORE -- LOTS MORE:
Lowrey deals with his ethical conflict by playing out very elaborate dreams, which appear almost real or surreal to the viewer. People in this near-future world have become very dependent on the computer that runs the government and, as a result, the citizens have degenerated into a mass of vain, superficial non-entities. Simply stated, the computerization of this future world has caused wholesale dehumanization which has undermined the human spirit. The embodiment of that spirit is represented here in Lowrey's fantasies. As banal and insignificant as they may seem, they are still true and genuine and of the individual, not the government. Therein lies the significance.
STILL MORE PACKED IN HERE:
Of course we have a romance, a product of Lowrey's dreams and maybe the woman in his dreams is a terrorist, or maybe she's just a truck driver. Until the end we don't know how it will all turn out or what it is all about. After the end, you be the judge. As for myself, I'll have to see it again a couple of times and see what I think.
ABOUT THE DVD:
I am reviewing the 142-minute version with an excellent and clean Widescreen transfer in Dolby Digital 2.0., English only, but subtitles available for English, Spanish and French.
If you are looking for features, buy the "Criterion Edition", but be warned, they are running almost $50.00 as of this writing!
Summary of Brazil
Synopsis: 0Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: R
Street Date: 01/09/07
Wide Screen: yes
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
LanguageENGLISH
Foreign Film: no
Subtitlesno
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve Please note: This supplier will be closed on 11/24, 11/25, 12/26, 1/2 for the holidays. The shipping cut off is 12/10 to try and have the products delivered by Christmas.
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed 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 unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled 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. This DVD version of Brazil is the special director's cut that first appeared in Criterion's comprehensive (and expensive) six-disc laser package in 1996. Although the DVD (at a fraction of the price) doesn't include that set's many extras, it's still a bargain. --Jim Emerson
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed 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 unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled 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. This DVD version of Brazil is the special director's cut that first appeared in Criterion's comprehensive (and expensive) six-disc laser package in 1996. --Jim Emerson
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