Brazil
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Movie Reviews of Brazil
Movie Review: BRAZILLIANT!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Finally, a movie for anyone who has ever been caught up in or feared being caught up in the teeth of our bureaucratic nightmare machine! Terry Gilliam has turned his laser-wit on "the system" and fashioned a tale of sinister idiocy and insidiously institutionalized inefficiency -stroke- ineptitude. Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a drone for the Ministry Of Information, a burocracy of dizzying stupidity and towering uselessness, set up in order to gather information on anyone suspicious. After all, these are dangerous times! We need protection from... ourselves. Anyway, Sam quietly drudges away his life with the other drones, perfectly hidden from upward mobility. However, Sam has a dream of escape. In his dream, Sam is a winged hero, flying high above the dull horror of his reality to save a beautiful woman (Kim Griest). We can soar with him, before waking up to get ready for our own 9-5 incarcerations. Sam is up for a promotion (thanks to his influential mum, played by Katherine Helmond) to Information Retrieval. Sam doesn't want to be promoted. He just wants to get by, get it over with, and get out. Unbeknownst to Sam, a man named "Buttle" has been arrested, bagged, taken to Information Retrieval, questioned, tortured, and killed. This would be normal routine, except for the fact that the man they wanted was named "Tuttle", not "Buttle". Oops! A refund check arrives in Sam's office, returning funds charged for the wrongful interrogation of poor Buttle. Sam's boss, Mr. Kurtzman (Ian Holm) is panic-stricken, not knowing what to do with the check. Sam tries to pass it on to another bureau to no avail. He finally decides to take the check to Mrs. Buttle in person. Once there,he is attacked by the mourning family. He also catches a glimpse of the girl in his dreams. Sam is obsessed with her, and takes his promotion to Information Retrieval when he finds out that the girl is a suspected terrorist. He figures it's his best chance at meeting her. Well, unfortunately for Sam, he has just entered the core of the insane asylum. His friend Jack Lint (Michael Palin) is a mild-mannered inquisitor. He "questions" folks like Buttle, seeking information. Sam witnesses first-hand the gruesome truth of the entire mess. His dreams become nightmares of his battles with a titanic metallic beast, with his dreamgirl caged and floating away. Sam is reaching his own critical mass. Thankfully, Sam has made a friend with Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro), who once fixed Sam's air conditioner. Tuttle is among the MOI's most wanted criminals. He is a man of mystery. He is pretty much everything that Sam Lowry dreams of being. He helps Sam to overcome his deadening ordinariness, and to rescue his dream girl (come to life) from the clutches of the system. Lowry tries his best to protect the girl, leading to his own downfall. The terror really sinks in when Sam himself is bagged, brought in, and strapped into the inquisitor's chair. Of course, his best friend Jack is the one who must extract Sam's confession. There is no exit now. Sam has reached the end of the line. He finds out that his only escape is to fall into insanity, the ultimate dream-state. Please, watch this movie and tell everyone you know about it! I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. Go get it -stroke- watch it -stroke- see what I mean...Movie Review: When the Bandages Come Off
Summary: 5 Stars
Produced in 1985, "Brazil" is a black (and bleak) comedy about a future gone eerily awry. A future that, since this is 2002, is already coming true around us. Terry Gilliam's brilliant, colorfully retro vision of the future has little in common with the styling of Orwell's "1984," but deep inside the message is the nearly the same. The only real difference is that, unlike Orwell, Gilliam believes that the one fragile hope is the durability of the human imagination.The opening scenes of the film reveal a manic world, where a bug (literally) in the works triggers the spectacular arrest of one Archibald Buttle, whose off-screen death under interrogation triggers a flurry of clerical paperwork. The world we see is fascinating, full of automation nearly gone berserk and the hapless human machinery that fills in the gaps. In this world, one may not only face hard interrogation, but be billed for that service as well. When Buttle, mistaken for terrorist Harry Tuttle, suffers a heart attack under questioning, Information Retrieval issues a refund. However, his wife's lack of a bank account triggers a series of complications. Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a daydreaming bureaucrat in the Ministry of Information, takes up the task of resolving the situation by hand delivering the check.
Harry faces many delightfully comic situations on his quest, as machinery refuses to function for him and the people in his world seem to treat him as something not quite socially acceptable. But all of this is brought up sharply when he finally confronts the widow. "My husband's dead, is he," she cries, "What have you done with his body?" Suddenly we are confronted with the truth. The surface is only a surface. As in "The Matrix," once you are past it something horrific looms. "Brazil" will continue to play this theme throughout. Walls conceal semi-organic, hostile masses of tubes and ductwork, room dividers separate upper-class diners from the gory reality of a terrorist bombing. Masses of plastic surgery cover the flaws of aging beauty.
It is no surprise that Harry falls victim to his own daydreams. Looking up through a hole in Mrs. Buttle's ceiling Lowry spies the face of the woman of his dreams, Jill the truck driver, played wonderfully by Kim Geist. In his desperate attempts to track her down, Sam transfers into the dark world of Information Retrieval. There, aided my his friend Jack Lint (Michael Palin), he finds out what he needs, but inadvertently sets in motion a series of events that can only be describes as a burlesque apocalypse. Layer after layer of his society's illusions collapse around him and Jill with humorous, but nightmarish precision.
Terry Gilliam has proven himself a genius at using dark humor and sarcasm to engage in a plot that would be horribly difficult otherwise. As in "The Fisher King," we laugh and snicker right up until we confront the truth. "Brazil" is a brilliant example of this. Full of the imaginative imagery of a retro-future world and great acting by a cast that includes the likes of Robert De Niro and Katherine Helmond it is an experience that stuns the sensibilities while bringing home its message. In his notes, Gilliam calls this a light-hearted nightmare. One will haunt you for some time to come.
Movie Review: Yet another 5-star review...
Summary: 5 Stars
You're not smarter than everyone else for liking, or like me-loving, this movie. I admit that no one I have lent my copy to has yet liked this movie, and that's too bad (but thay are no less intelligent because of it). Years and years ago when I worked at one of those BIG video stores (which I will not name here), I used to try to talk people into taking back the movie they had selected in favor of Brazil. If they seemed reluctant then I would simply ruin the ending of the movie in their hand, and then assure them I was saving them time and money. The job was really boring, so I had to keep myself entertained. No one ever complained though...
That aside, the movie is really stunning. It's the theatrical equivalent of a Dali painting, at least in theme. Terry Gilliam has done some impressive things in film, but this movie, at least to me-and some others- is a masterpiece. With out a doubt it is bizarre, and the fantasy world of Sam Lowry is only slightly less bizarre than the reality this movie asserts. Its first rate satire, as only the British can supply it(yes I know Terry is from the states, but he's pretty much an honorary brit), with a love story that doesn't need to be believable for this movie to work. There's so much social commentary, that for it's time was ahead of it's time: a child asking Santa for a credit card for Christmas, Sam's mother and mothers friend trying to one-up each other in plastic surgery. Outrageous. Why can't Hollywood make movies like this? Fight Club was a good effort, but it tried too hard to be cool, and somehow tainted the over all quality of that film (which is not the point here). The Robert DeNiro cameo was so unexpected that it felt like a cavalry charge, and it worked so well because that's what his character represented.
The movie meanders on from one daydream to another, one bit of faux-reality to another, until it becomes difficult to tell one from the other. Its bleak landscapes are quite intentional, and serve well to crush the viewer with the monstrosity of modern living. Quality of life becomes a real question as the movie takes you through its paces, and caters to ones deepest anxieties about life in the near-future. But to say this movie is depressing does it little justice. At times it can be uplifting. It's just not Hollywood fluff spoon fed to you, which is ironic being that the consumer is the hand that feeds them. A mutually parasitic relationship perhaps? Who can say...
I could still watch this movie many times over, and really regret not to have been able to see it in the theatre, where movies get their best treatment anyways. Still I try to get others to enjoy this movie as much as I do, but it seems destined to be a cult classic, which to me has so many negative connotations. So buyer/renter beware. But I really don't think this movie should be a source of elitism, which also has its own negative connotations. I myself am an idiot, and still I love this flick, so maybe there is hope for the world yet!
Movie Review: Weird, wacky, wonderful
Summary: 5 Stars
There aren't too many movies like "Brazil" around. It's been assigned to the category "steampunk" but I'm not sure that is correct- it has some cyberpunk attributes as well. Anyway, the labels aren't too important. What matters is the clever 3-way mix of human story, technology fantasy/satire, and sharp cynicism about the future of society.
Imagine a version of "1984" where everything is pretty much governed by the "information Ministry." But rather than being a horrifyingly efficient organ of the State, it is more of a bureaucratic nightmare with masses of "organization men" shuffling huge amounts of paper and aided - or hindered - by a computer technology that uses old Remington typewriter keyboards and small screens that have a magnifying lens in front of them! Televisions are the old 1950's style rounded-edge screens. HVAC systems are a jumble of huge hoses that breathe stertorously as they supply the air. A truck is a large cumbersome vehicle with far too many bits and pieces all over it, huge tires, and a general "Mad Max" look.
The film tracks the path of a guileless minor cog in this over-organized but inefficient society. He doesn't want to participate in any of the internal status struggles, just to stay where he is, doing meaningless work and fantasizing/dreaming of a life as a winged superhero soaring through the clouds to meet a beautiful woman...and great is his amazement when in real life he sees the same enchanting face! His life is never the same. I won't spoil the plot except that you can take the ending as either sad or happy, in spite of tragedy along the way. The dysfunctional social power structure has teeth that can bite and the SWAT types and their weapons are real enough.
Some of the vignettes are very much from the UK background - the two bloody-minded HVAC repairmen are a dig at the British trade unions, many of which are famous for their intransigence and turf jealousy.
The movie makes wonderful points about our ability for denial, as when a terrorist bomb blast shatters part of a fancy restaurant and the band plays on while the staff quickly erect ornamental screens to prevent the unharmed diners from seeing the carnage, and continue to serve.
Lastly, I'm surprised that no one else has mentioned the passing reference to Grace Hopper and the "bug" theory...An old piece of computer lore is that a program error on a very early computing machine was due to an insect trapped in a relay and Admiral Hopper then coined the term "bug" for program errors. This is likely incorrect, but it was amusing to see a huge mistaken-identity element of the plot of "Brazil" triggered by a bug falling into a clunky typewriter-like printer and causing a person's name to be printed incorrectly.
Well worth a viewing!
Movie Review: Escape...
Summary: 5 Stars
To label `Brazil' a masterpiece seems almost cliché. To say that it is brilliant seems almost like a lazy cop-out. Standing back and reflecting on the film as a living entity, there seems to be something almost entirely alien about it, as if it were a specious all its own. There is nothing like it, yet it bleeds familiarities that make it almost comforting to the eyes. While under its spell I must say that I found myself fascinated, the entire time drawing comparisons to other more commercially acceptable work (this film, for me, feels like what would have happened if The Coen brothers rewrote `V for Vendetta' in the vein of a 40's film noir with `The Fifth Element' close in mind). With the smoke cleared though, this films complexion reads something entirely its own; something I have never seen before and may never see again.
I am not an expert on director Terry Gilliam's work, but the four films I've seen of his (`Monty Python and the Holy Grail', `Brazil', `The Fisher King' & '12 Monkeys') are sheer brilliance in their respective genre's, all of which proving him to be not simply a mere film director but a visionary, an auteur much as the same way that Michael Haneke or Lars von Trier are auteurs.
Terry Gilliam is a storyteller, not a mere movie-maker.
`Brazil' tells the complex story of a man named Sam Lowry who works for an intelligence agency working to fight terrorism. When a mistake costs an innocent man his life, Lowry finds himself trapped in the center of government cover-up; something that he seems almost naïve to. When he falls in love (through his constant day-dreaming) with a belligerent woman seeking justice, his life spirals out of control as he is forced to recognize the condition of his own country, something he has feigned ignorance to for so long.
The world that Gilliam creates here is one that is an obvious satirical exaggeration of modern society, at times even more appropriate today than it was twenty-five years ago.
`Brazil' is not a commercial film, not an easily accessible film to say the least. It is not something you can switch off your brain to and then appreciate, understand or enjoy. `Brazil' is a film that you need to absorb in order to grasp its complexities, but it is well worth the extra brain-power used to understand it. With gripping performances (especially by Jonathan Pryce) as well as a slew of supporting roles by some heavy hitters (Robert De Niro, Ian Holm and Bob Hoskins), `Brazil' has it all. The sets may be dated, and the overall conceptual outlook of a futuristic metropolis may seem old-fashioned, but the way that Gilliam weaves his tale makes up for any minor details.
I promise you this; `Brazil is unlike anything you've ever experienced before.