**A film that was enough for more than one review: dream, nightmare, utopia and reality.**

It was in 1939 that composer and singer-songwriter Ary Barroso released the iconic song “Aquarela do Brasil”. This samba became an icon of Brazilian music and was sung and disseminated by such noble voices as Francisco Alves, João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Caetano Veloso, Tim Maia, Gal Costa, Erasmo Carlos, Elis Regina and, in English versions, Frank Sinatra and the Portuguese Carmem Miranda. Ary Barroso, however, never imagined that the mere sight of an elderly man, sitting on a beach on a rainy day while listening to his song, would end up inspiring Terry Gilliam to make a film. But, before these words can mislead anyone, and especially any Brazilian, it is necessary to clarify that the film has nothing to do with Brazil.

The film takes place in an unnamed country that lives under a dictatorship (okay, Brazil was a dictatorship when the film was released, but the similarity ends there). The government, obsessed with controlling information, has created a monstrous and highly ineffective bureaucratic system that makes fatal mistakes. It is because of one of these mistakes that a citizen is arrested and killed as a revolutionary, mistaken for the real fugitive. And so we meet Sam Lowry, a government official with a conventional life who is plagued by dreams where he flies like a bird and saves a damsel in distress. His life changes precisely when he meets a woman like the one in the dream and finds that she, too, is in danger of being arrested for another mistake.

I haven't seen both movies, but I believe the critics who said there were similarities between this movie and "1984". I myself could see the similarities with “Metropolis”, either in the narrative or in the bizarre and exaggerated visual aspects. As in those films, we have a dystopian, totalitarian society, where the individual is stripped of his humanity and becomes a cog in a larger gear, serving the State. Of course, the film weaves a long and judicious critique around this, and the bureaucracy that the country sustains, and which is of little practical use. It also offers us some sharp criticisms of the futile needs and vanity of today's society. The big problem is that all this seems to have no meaning. In fact, the main plot ignores these issues: Sam, the main character, is not a revolutionary nor does he seem to have political ideas. In fact, if you look closely, he seems to act almost on instinct, living his life as if it were a dream. The main plot is underutilized and poorly harmonizes with the rest of the film, as if it conflicts with the visuals and the other points of the script.

Gilliam made an original film. Where he failed was in the harmonic conjunction of the pieces in his work. And of course, in the relationship with the studios, which almost forced him to accept a radical cut in the film, considered excessively long and expensive. In fairness, I can understand both sides: the studios were trying to monetize an investment and rationalize expenses; for his part, Gilliam did not want his creative work done in pieces, although it is clear where the money was spent: just look at the incredible visuals, the dreamlike way in which he expresses himself as a director. Jonathan Pryce is the featured actor playing Sam. He gives us a work of great quality and is very well assisted by Katherine Helmond, in a very interesting sarcastic role, and Kim Greist, his romantic partner. The film also features the participation of great actors of the time, namely Bob Hoskins, Jim Broadbent, Barbara Hiks, Ian Holm, Michael Palin and Robert De Niro. This perhaps shows the prestige and consideration that the artistic world already had for Gilliam: the actors, more than having a good salary, wanted to work with him.

All of this is very nice, but why is the film called Brazil, and why did I mention it in a song? I was also thinking about this for some time, it really is something that does not seem understandable at first glance. I saw the film and nothing seemed to give me the answer to the choice of title, except the insistence on the song, which is the skeleton on top of which the film's soundtrack was assembled. But perhaps Gilliam was trying to show us, through this song, the dreamlike utopia of Sam's dream compared to the fantasies of others and the dystopian reality of his life.

One of my all time favourite sci fi movies. Set the bench mark for modern sci fi, should be considered a great like Blade Runner.
Great acting, story, soundtrack! 5/5

Brazil nuts are relatively large nuts coming from one of the most useful trees in the Amazon rainforest. It literally has 1001 uses from carpentry, health benefits, lubricants to flooring.

The 1985 Terry Gilliam film, Brazil, might be just as useful and is perhaps modern masterpiece. I realize that’s a bold comparison and a bold assertation. Here’s the thing: I might actually be understating it.

Now, this is probably in my top five films of all time, like fellow Universal film, Jaws. Unlike the fish film, this movie was expensive and did not (at least not initially) recoup its production costs. In fact, it was a flop in the box office while being a critical darling. Upon my recent rewatch, I was taken aback by how modern of a film it still appears to be. The themes it takes on just haven’t changed all that much despite the film being nearly forty years old.

The practical effects and eye popping set design, in particular, appear as fresh as the day they were made in the same lyrically fantastic world they create here. Even in 1985, you were wondering if this film was set in the future or the past. The devices seemed concurrently in the future and past with old fashioned typewriters hooked up to television screens (so small, they require a magnifying lens in front of them to be legible). The vehicles were a mix of old and new taste as were the outlandish fashions from ultramod to ferociously classic men in hats.

The basic plot, which is anything but basic, regards a clerical error at a bureaucracy that leads to the wrong person being detained and killed in a dystopian cityscape and one cog in the wheel’s machinery attempting to upset the apple cart. This is a film, very much, about being in the middle. I was surprised to hear that originally this film was conceived to have a younger protagonist, because the themes here ring so beautifully for the middle aged / middle management everyman that Jonathan Pryce plays so well here. He is literally in the middle being pushed and prodded from any and every angle possible. His mother wants him to be promoted and show more ambition while he has no such aspirations. His aspirations lead him to a “dream girl” who is mixed up in the merry mix-up at the center of the tale. His only real friend, Michael Palin, is led to play Judas and deny his friend by the circumstances that swallow up all, including a renegade heating engineer, Robert De Niro, who is literally consumed by the paperwork that permeates every part of this society.

Gilliam was surprised that conservatives have taken to the film, which he clearly framed as a criticism of right wing political tendencies. However, as our society continues to evolve, the right and left seem to becoming more similar than either side would like to admit. As the right took to banning books in the past, cancel culture has woke in the past decade to be just as large a weapon in censorship. While conservatives still believe in using the government to keep law and order and run a tight ship, the growth of government agencies clearly has grown under the liberal value in big government running peoples lives the way they want them to live it.

On this rewatch, I was taken by some of the propaganda posters:

Suspicion breeds confidence.
Don’t Suspect a Friend: Report Him.
Happiness: We’re All In This Together

Some of these sentiments ring particularly familiar coming off the great mask shaming pandemic of the past two years. Had I not seen this film in the theaters when it came out, I would swear it came out just the other day.

The satire of the government’s rebranding of itself as “Central Services” however, makes the commentary more global than I think was intended. Let’s face it, much of our criticisms of bureaucracy can be leveled just as easily to the health care system or any corporate entity. One of my favorite scenes has Ian Holm feigning arthritis so that he can’t sign a document while his employee picks up the pen and signs in his stead. Executive indecision and reluctance to act is a central theme that can right through the halls of government or an office building with similar amplitude of reverberation.

The notion that the government bills its citizens for their own incarceration and detention is one I could see many people backing in our current electorate, but these types of notions could truly come to some ugly consequences. As one guard says to a man about to be horribly tortured (at his expense):

Don't fight it son. Confess quickly! If you hold out too long you could jeopardize your credit rating.

It is great quotes like this that come to me at the most inopportune times. Add the Monty Python comedic love for confusion and double talk and you have a fantastically quotable film. Here’s some of my favorites:

What do you attribute the recent uptick in terrorist activity?
Bad Sportsmanship.

Give my regards to the twins.
Triplets.
Triplets? How time flies.

Sorry, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork. Where would we be if we didn't follow the correct procedures?

I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms.

This is information retrieval not information dispersal.

Santa: What would you like for Christmas?
Small child: My own credit card.

My complication has a little complication.


Literally every aspect of the film can be analyzed and reconstructed. Does the never ending building and construction reflect our modern belief that progress only is evident with physical structures? Is the plastic surgery subplot about how people reinvent themselves to either outrageous fortune or miserable defeat? Is the primary theme that impersonal machines, procedures and forms adapted by a bureaucracy unable to properly react to real emotions and feeling? Is the protagonists dreams of defeating a monolithic super samurai a statement on the nature of heroism in demanding freedom? Is freedom the escape from want and need in exchange for no privacy and plenty of paranoia?

Or is the movie really all about duct work? I say that because within the first few moments of film, we see how ducts are so important to “Central Services” and we see the ducts carrying energy and air, but also sewage and memos like those tubes at the drive up lanes at the bank. In one scene, Pryce, fed up with taking information from one department, processing it and sending it to the next, connects two of ducts together with a length of hose, which quickly overloads the system…to his joy and wonder.

I know this sounds like some pretentious A24 crap that leaves you wishing for an interpretive YouTube video after you finish…but unlike a garbage parable like mother! (which I still might think is the worst offender I’ve ever seen), you are left with actual questions that are worth asking but may not even deserve an answer.

In a world where everything is labeled, numbered, cataloged, with no freedom, no dreams, and omnipotent clerks, do we really deserve answers?