Is Brazil a Christmas movie? Well it is now! Terry Gilliam’s arguably most discussed film is certainly set during the season, and it’s kind of…sort of…about getting together in a way. It certainly has nothing to do with the Portuguese-speaking country, though I hear their tourist board would love City of God instead.
But I’m getting too far ahead of myself—Gilliam of course got his start as the token American in Monty Python, though by the making of this film had thoroughly settled into the UK, with this being all too obvious here. Having now kicked off his own solo film career, he went through quite an arduous process in production with his higher-ups—ironic, considering the main themes of overbearing authority here. After cuts and recuts, it eventually released, with mixed success thanks to abortive theatrical screenings—but in the forty years since, has become quite the name in the cult circuit.
Our story sets off its tone quickly, with a family in the Yuletide season interrupted by a dissident-snatching SWAT team operating on botched paperwork because of a fly literally getting into the machinery. After that, we focus on a youngish Jonathan Pryce as Sam Lowry, a minor apparatchik working in a byzantine ministry for a totalitarian state that nevertheless stumbles over itself between incompetence and departments refusing to take responsibility for anything. Upon trying to resolve the beginning case, Lowry gets enamoured with a mysterious woman (Kim Greist) and goes out of his way to find her—even at the risk of actually bringing down this demented not-Oceania upon him.
There’s not a scene that isn’t steeped in good quality deadpan satire—some people claim this one’s about capitalism, or socialism, but truthfully it can be applied to anywhere where one must face the indifferent machinery of overwrought bureaucracy, which doesn’t care what ism you’re worshipping. Between the pretentious plastic surgery chasing upper classes here, and the statistics-obsessed government ministries barely able to keep their elevators functioning, it’s the worst of all worlds—and thus gives us all the variety of dry chuckles.
The most memorable elements are of course the production design and mise-en-scene—Gilliam at his best was always good at this, and here we have a retro-futuristic world where we have personal computers made of typewriters and magnifying glasses, where giant concrete halls of information retrieval go on forever, and where even the skyscraper seem to be shaped like giant masses of filing cabinets. The imagination really goes off the wall in Lowry’s dream sequences, some of which go off a bit too long like this one moment with a giant samurai out of nowhere—but I appreciate the energy at least. Either way, you’re certainly not forgetting the look here.
The side-performances are also nice—there’s memorable cameos from Bob Hoskins and Michael Palin, with Robert De Niro of all people in a supporting role as a superhero specializing in, er, fixing central heating. Ian Holm and others encapsulate that kind of 20th century British stuffy official taken to the logical extreme, with a lot of the folks here overshadowing Pryce as he bumbles around on his love quest (which is on face value one of the more dated elements of the film let’s say, though there’s room to interpret it as not being all that it seems).
And of course there’s the demented climax, where everything is definitely not all that it seems. Things go on maybe a little bit too long and at times the visual metaphors get a bit overdone, but again, there’s certainly fun to be had, up until the last scene hits you hard.
And that’s Brazil—not without some flaws, but it’s definitely worth a one-time watch. With the world still clutched in ever-expanding nonsense with left hands not even glancing at right hands, there’s all too much to still relate to here. Fill in your duct paperwork, and give it a shot if you haven’t…
Comments
Post a Comment