Brazil (1985)
Fox DVD (region 4)

d. Terry Gilliam; pr. Arnon Milchan; scr. Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown; ph. Roger Pratt; m. Michael Kamen; ed. Julian Doyle; cast. Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Kim Griest, Katherine Helmond, Michael Palin, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughn, Jim Broadbent (132 mins)

Although Terry Gilliam is an unquestioned visionary, his films have been problematically received by both critics and audiences, especially in the USA. 

Brazil is something of a case in point and is still often considered to be the quintessential Gilliam movie, the cause celebre of his career; stories abounding of its budget overruns and especially of the difficulties it had securing a general release.  This dystopic, despairing comedy had several screenwriters and a generous budget but ran into problems when it came time to distribute Gilliam’s final cut.  It was both a long and unusual film, even incomprehensibly obscure, and soon thus proved too bizarre and contentious for American distributors.  Not knowing what to make of the version offered them, the studio wanted to recut the movie.  Gilliam protested, but eventually the film was reworked for American release, its ending shortened and re-edited to in effect transform the nature of the film itself.  Although the uncut version of the film was justly praised, it was the expurgated version that dominated US screenings.  When the film flopped in the US it was its critical success abroad that brought American critics to the uncut version.  In the years since this severity of post-production interference, Brazil has become a cult film, in no small part due to the reputation Gilliam subsequently developed as the lone iconoclast who stood up to against Hollywood compromise.

Brazil takes place “somewhere in the 20th Century” in a heavily bureaucratic society beset by terrorism. 

Jonathan Pryce is a file clerk working for the monolithic government and a man who has dreams of flying free, rescuing his ideal woman and escaping the world around him.  He is having trouble with his apartment’s electrics and plumbing, which are soon fixed by a renegade repair-man (Robert DeNiro).  One day, Pryce’s superior (Ian Holm) is befuddled by what to do with a rare refund cheque and so Pryce goes in person to return it.  There he sees a woman (Kim Griest) who looks exactly like the ideal woman in his dreams.  He pursues but loses her.  Nevertheless, he finds out her name and returns home whereupon he finds himself in trouble with the official repair organization (known as Central Services) for having earlier used the unlicensed DeNiro.  Increasingly obsessed with finding Griest, he takes an offer of promotion to another department where he can find out more information about her.  When he sees her again, he jumps onto her truck before she can drive away and tries to persuade her that he is in love with her.  Though sceptical at first, she soon warms to this rather geeky man.  However, she has a delivery job to do and Pryce sees her pick up a mysterious package.  As much as he thinks he loves her, he soon begins to wonder if she is one of the terrorists and if the package contains a bomb.

Brazil is a dystopic comedy, brilliantly finding the humour in absurd despair.  It presents a horrendous (but oddly familiar) nightmarish society and then proceeds to chronicle one man’s attempt to escape its confines. 

It is done with a fevered, grotesque intensity with a fine play on the notion of “the spanner in the works”: whether defiance can topple the monolith.  For Gilliam, such defiance is triggered by the imagination, by fantasy.  Pryce’s fantasies are the beginning stages of a discontent and longing which he eventually cannot suppress.  Initially escapist, they offer revolution.  Yet he is not a sympathetic man – he is at the outset a petty, complacent and indifferent bureaucrat.  Nevertheless, the point of his adventure seems to be that it is the force of dreams and the imagination which propel individuals into decisive action, even if the consequences may result in their own destruction by a state that cannot tolerate imagination.  Repressed romantic longing and associated imaginings are the beginnings of revolution in this film’s peculiar assessment of the role of imagination in the social compact.  Reality here is a nightmare in which the only freedom is through the imagination. This is thus incompatible with the bureaucratic monolith and inherently a form of individualist defiance – a blow to the predictability and smooth functioning of the system.  In this sense terrorism is both proto-revolutionary defiance and the epitome of unpredictability.

The more Pryce seeks to transform reality into the world of his imagination, wherein he is the glorious hero, the more he is perhaps doomed to failure. 

Yet, the film’s end makes a most disturbingly ambiguous point concerning this illusory nature of freedom.  Imagination in Brazil may lead to madness, but in that state of complete detachment from reality, as horrible as it is and as illusory as its version of reality may be, there is nevertheless a sense of ironic triumph.  The idea that madness may be a victory of the imagination – almost its inevitable goal – is a theme that recurs throughout Gilliam’s movies and here finds a bleak hilarity.  There is hence a momentum to Pryce’s actions, as if such focused, inspired endeavours are also antithetical to the surrounding bureaucratic stagnation and oppression.  In so restrictive a world, the only escape thus is finally in madness as if the ideal way to defeat reality is to redefine it through psychosis.  It is the ambiguity of this concept that ultimately makes the film of Brazil such a rich thesis on the function of the imagination within what the film considers the totalitarianism of any bureaucratic society.  In Gilliam’s vision, much of what is frightening is also funny and in an ideal fusion of theme and style, the film itself, as comedic and despairing, is a triumph of the imagination.  Whether this imagination is inherently revolutionary is the question lingering after viewing this film.

DVD DETAILS:

Vision
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer preserves the film’s striking design, full of tilted angles and wide-angle lenses for increased distortion; maintaining a sense of Python-esque oppression and the grotesqueness for which Gilliam is known: thus a sense of grim, dark and sombre constriction recurs throughout and the film has a distinctly 1940s period sense to it – a kind of futurist nostalgia in production design.  A notion of accumulating clutter runs through the film and the parallel between the ducts of Pryce’s house and the bowels and guts of the human body is well sustained, resulting in a slyly scatological humour in a film full of absurd, surreal and grotesque instances, with a fine use of plastic surgery as yet another metaphor related to the idea of illusion and the indifferent vanity of the elite.  Costumes (uniforms) and oppressive architecture add a sense of fascistic grandeur.  The incorporation of fantasy into reality is tantalizingly developed: at first the distinction is clear, then their spill-over conveyed as a means of charting Pryce’s movement towards both revolutionary defiance and escapism.  Compositions are always striking although many of the film’s detractors have labelled it a movie of art direction over content.  Some shots are murky and grainy on this transfer and the occasionally faltering clarity levels result in some inconsistency.  Nevertheless, the grotesque vision is preserved.

Sound
The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound transfer is functional.  The relentless, jovial drive of the score adds tremendously and there are fine segues to develop a constant sense of evolution, juxtaposition and madcap, screwball propulsion.  Intriguingly, the way the score incorporates the rhythm of beeps and other mechanical sounds allies the joviality to a rather mechanistic oppression: as it proceeds, it hence bridges the romantic and the tyrannical, tied to Pryce’s imagination.  Voices are mannered, adding a caricaturish quality to complement the stylized performances.  Dialogue is often ironically allusive (such as the references to the acid-man: one drug reference perhaps foreshadowing Gilliam’s later work on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and much is made of the idea of self-absorption and human indifference.  The happy nature of actor Michael Palin is also used to ironic effect – another indication of the stress on the chasm between pleasant appearance or demeanour and the monstrousness it covers.  It is a highly unusual sound mix, constantly searching and contributing to the rapid shifts in tone that are also characteristic of this director.  Much of the time, the sound design is deliberately heightened, over-stressed and often cartoonish and with oddly hallucinatory moments.  The final scenes are a fine mix of the imaginatory and the realistic: the artificial enhancements of film form as an aid to the imagination.

Special Features

In comparison of this release to those available in other regions, this region 4 release is a disappointment in terms of the special features on offer.  In the way of special features are an original theatrical trailer and a 30 minute documentary featurette titled “What is Brazil” by Rob Hedden.  This covers the actors’ opinions of the film in terms of its theme, meaning and genre and how the film relates to the idea of the imagination and the future of humanity.  Mention is thus made of its openness to interpretation, the theme of escape (as illusory?) and the very lengthy scripting process (with feedback from all involved in the various script drafts).  There is some behind the scenes footage and a discussion of the editing process that saw many of the fantasy sequences trimmed or jettisoned.  However, there are no deleted scenes nor any further added features regarding the cut footage and the US release print’s misfortunes.  The scenes cut from the film and the alternate ending designed for the American release are also discussed.  Amusingly, Gilliam’s comment that the film is about “the impossibility of escaping from reality” could be taken as something of a career summation.  Although the documentary provides a valuable context and is sufficient for a general release, multizone collectors should also thus note that Brazil has been subject to a fully restored release in the USA by Criterion, with a plethora of special features as well as the cut US version of the film.

Copyright (C) Robert Cettl All Rights Reserved Last modified: September 23, 2009