Brazil (1985 film)

Brazil

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Produced by Arnon Milchan
Screenplay by
Starring
Music by Michael Kamen
Cinematography Roger Pratt
Edited by Julian Doyle
Production
company
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release dates
  • 20 February 1985 (France)
  • 22 February 1985 (United Kingdom)
Running time
 143 minutes[1]
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget $15 million[2]
Box office $9.9 million (North America)[3]

Brazil is a 1985 British film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. British National Cinema by Sarah Street describes the film as a "fantasy/satire on bureaucratic society" while John Scalzi's Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies describes it as a "dystopian satire". The film stars Jonathan Pryce and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm.

The film centres on Sam Lowry, a man trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living a life in a small apartment, set in a consumer-driven dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines. Brazil‍ '​s bureaucratic, totalitarian government is reminiscent of the government depicted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four,[4][5] except that it has a buffoonish, slapstick quality and lacks a Big Brother figure.

Jack Mathews, film critic and author of The Battle of Brazil (1987), described the film as "satirizing the bureaucratic, largely dysfunctional industrial world that had been driving Gilliam crazy all his life".[6] Though a success in Europe, the film was unsuccessful in its initial North America release. It has since become a cult film.

The film is named after the recurrent theme song, "Aquarela do Brasil", as performed by Geoff Muldaur.

Plot

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low-level government employee who has frequent daydreams of saving a damsel in distress. One day he is assigned the task of trying to rectify an error caused by a fly getting jammed in a printer, misprinting a file it was copying, resulting in the incarceration and accidental death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle, instead of the suspected terrorist, freelance heating engineer Archibald Tuttle.

When Sam visits Buttle's widow, he discovers Jill Layton (Kim Greist), the upstairs neighbour of the Buttles, and is astonished to see that she has the face of the woman from his recurring dreams. Jill is trying to help Mrs. Buttle find out what happened to her husband, but has become sick of dealing with the bureaucracy. Unbeknownst to her, she is now considered a terrorist accomplice of Tuttle for attempting to report the mistake of Buttle's arrest in Tuttle's place to a corrupt bureaucracy that would rather dispose of all the evidence and witnesses than admit such an error.

When Sam tries to approach her, she is very cautious and avoids giving Sam full details, worried the government will track her down. During this time, Sam comes in contact with the real Tuttle (Robert De Niro), a renegade air conditioning specialist who once worked for Central Services but left due to his dislike of the tedious and repetitive paperwork. Tuttle helps Sam deal with two Central Services workers, Spoor (Bob Hoskins) and Dowser (Derrick O'Connor), who later return to demolish Sam's ducts and seize his apartment under the guise of fixing the air conditioning.

Sam discovers that the only way to learn about Jill is to get transferred to Information Retrieval, where he would have access to her classified records. He had previously turned down a promotion engineered by his mother, Ida (Katherine Helmond), vainly obsessed with rejuvenating plastic surgery under the care of cosmetic surgeon Dr. Jaffe (Jim Broadbent). She has connections to high-ranking officers and despairs of Sam's lack of ambition. Sam is able to retract his refusal by speaking directly with Deputy Minister Mr. Helpmann (Peter Vaughan) at a party given by his mother. He eventually obtains Jill's records and tracks her down before she is arrested, then falsifies her records to make her appear deceased, allowing her to escape the bureaucracy. The two share a romantic night together, but they are quickly apprehended by the government at gunpoint.

Charged with treason for abusing his newly acquired position, Sam is restrained to a chair in a large, empty cylindrical room (the interior of a power station cooling tower), to be tortured by his old friend, Jack Lint (Michael Palin), who is wearing a mask seen earlier in Sam's dreams and had previously distanced himself from Sam. Sam also learns that Jill had been killed resisting arrest. However, before Jack manages to begin the torture, Tuttle and other members of the resistance break into the Ministry. The resistance shoots Jack, rescues Sam, and blows up the Ministry building as they flee.

Sam and Tuttle run off together, but Tuttle disappears amid a mass of scraps of paper from the destroyed Ministry. Sam runs to his mother attending a funeral for a friend who died of excessive cosmetic surgery. Finding his mother now looking like Jill and fawned over by a flock of juvenile admirers, Sam falls into the open casket, falling through an empty black void. He lands in a world from his daydreams, and attempts escape up a pile of flex-ducts from the police and imaginary monsters. He finds a door at the top of the pile and, passing through it, is surprised to find himself in a trailer driven by Jill. The two drive away from the city together.

However, this "happy ending" is all a product of Sam's delusions: Sam is still strapped to the chair and observed by Jack and Deputy Minister Mr. Helpmann, who is portrayed along the film as a good "friend" of Sam's family. Realising that Sam has descended into blissful insanity, the two declare him a lost cause and exit the room. The film ends with Sam sitting in the chair, smiling and singing "Brazil".

Cast

Co-writer Charles McKeown plays Harvey Lime, Sam's co-worker. Director Terry Gilliam makes a cameo appearance as the smoking man at Shang-ri La Towers, while his daughter Holly Gilliam portrays Jack Lint's daughter, Holly Lint.[10] Other cast members include Jim Broadbent as Dr. Louis Jaffe, Mrs. Lowry's plastic surgeon, Barbara Hicks as Mrs. Alma Terrain, Kathryn Pogson as her daughter Shirley, Bryan Pringle as the waiter Spiro, Brian Miller as Mr. Archibald Buttle, Sheila Reid as Mrs. Veronica Buttle, Derrick O'Connor as Spoor's partner Dowser, Derek Deadman and Nigel Planer as Bill and Charlie (workers seen repairing Buttle's ceiling), Gorden Kaye as the MOI Lobby Porter, Jack Purvis as Dr. Chapman, Elizabeth Spender as Alison "Barbara" Lint, Myrtle Devenish as the typist in Jack's office and Roger Ashton-Griffiths as the priest.

Production

Writing

Gilliam developed the story and wrote the first draft of the screenplay with Charles Alverson, who was paid for his work but was ultimately uncredited in the final film. For nearly 20 years, Gilliam denied that Alverson had made any material contribution to the script. But then when the first draft was published and original in-progress documents emerged from Alverson's files, Gilliam begrudgingly changed his story. This was a bit late for either credit on the film or a listing on the failed Oscar nomination for Alverson. He has said that he would not have minded the Oscar nomination, even though he didn’t think much of the script or the finished film.[13] Gilliam, McKeown, and Stoppard collaborated on further drafts. Brazil was developed under the titles The Ministry and 1984 ½, the latter a nod not only to Orwell's original 1984 but also to 8½ by Federico Fellini, a director whom Gilliam often cites as one of the defining influences on his visual style when directing.[14] During the film's production, other working titles floated about, including The Ministry of Torture, How I Learned to Live with the System – So Far,[15] and So That's Why the Bourgeoisie Sucks,[16] before settling with Brazil relating to the name of its escapist signature tune.

Gilliam sometimes refers to this film as the second in his "Trilogy of Imagination" films, starting with Time Bandits (1981) and ending with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989).[6] All are about the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible."[6] All three movies focus on these struggles and attempts to escape them through imagination—Time Bandits, through the eyes of a child, Brazil, through the eyes of a man in his thirties, and Munchausen, through the eyes of an elderly man. In 2013, Gilliam also called Brazil the first instalment of a dystopian satire trilogy it forms with 1995's 12 Monkeys and 2013's The Zero Theorem.[17]

Gilliam has stated that Brazil was inspired by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four—which he has admitted never having read[10]—but is written from a contemporary perspective rather than looking to the future as Orwell did. In Gilliam's words, his film was "the Nineteen Eighty-Four for 1984." Critics and analysts have pointed out many similarities and differences between the two, an example being that contrary to Winston Smith, Sam Lowry's spirit did not capitulate as he sank into complete catatonia.[4][18]

Art design

Logo of the Ministry of Information

Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice wrote, "Gilliam understood that all futuristic films end up quaintly evoking the naïve past in which they were made, and turned the principle into a coherent comic aesthetic."[19] In the second version of the script, Gilliam and Alverson described the film's setting like this: "It is neither future nor past, and yet a bit of each. It is neither East nor West, but could be Belgrade or Scunthorpe on a drizzly day in February. Or Cicero, Illinois, seen through the bottom of a beer bottle."[20]

The result has been dubbed "retro-futurism" by fellow filmmakers Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro.[19] Generally called "sci-fi noir," it is "a view of what the 1980s might have looked like as viewed from the perspective of a 1940s filmmaker."[21] It is an eclectic yet coherent mixture of styles and production designs derived from Fritz Lang's films (particularly Metropolis and M) or film noir pictures starring Humphrey Bogart: "On the other hand, Sam's reality has a '40s noir feel. Some sequences are shot to recall images of Humphrey Bogart on the hunt and one character (Harvey Lime) may be named as an homage to The Third Man's Harry Lime."[21] A number of reviewers also saw a distinct influence of German Expressionism, as the 1920s seminal, more nightmarish, predecessor to 1940s film noir, in general in how Gilliam made cunning use of lighting and set designs.[22][23] A brief sequence towards the end, in which resistance fighters flee from government soldiers on the steps of the Ministry, pays homage to the Odessa Steps sequence in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925).[10]

This eclectic virtuosity and attention to detail in lighting and set design was coupled with Gilliam's trademark obsession for very wide lenses and tilted camera angles; going unusually wide for an audience used to mainstream Hollywood productions, Gilliam made the film's wide-angle shots with 14mm (Zeiss), 11mm, and 9.8mm (Kinoptik) lenses, the latter being a recent technological innovation at the time as one of the first lenses of that short a focal length that did not fish-eye.[24] In fact, over the years, the 14mm lens has become informally known as "The Gilliam" among film-makers due to the director's frequent use of it since Brazil.[25]

One visual element which figures prominently in the movie is the ducts, specifically the snakelike "flex-ducts" used in modern construction. The film even opens with an advertisement for different styles of ducting available for homes as seen on a display of television sets in a store front window.

Sam's apartment is dominated by a wall consisting entirely of metal panels which conceal a woefully outdated and complex air-conditioning system – the guerrilla engineer Tuttle is the only person able to tame it. Later, Sam lunches in a restaurant dominated by a giant centerpiece where the "flowers" are actually flex-ducts. Still later, when Sam makes a potentially seditious nighttime visit to his office, the emptiness of the government building's gigantic lobby is set off by maintenance men's floor buffing machines, trailing long cords of flex-duct.

In the working-class Buttle home, the families have to live their lives while giving way to ducts that in fact hinder their daily activities. In Sam's home, the ducts are not visible initially, but make their presence felt as an undertone when they break down. In the Department of Records, the ducts are a visible part of the environment, but above everyone's heads. Finally, in the dreaded Department of Information Retrieval, there are very few ducts.

The reference to form 27B-6, without which no work can be done by repairmen of the Department of Public Works, is a reference to George Orwell, who lived at Canonbury Square Apartment 27B, Floor 6, while writing parts of Nineteen Eighty-Four.[26][27]

Music

Ary Barroso's 1939 song "Aquarela do Brasil" ("Watercolor of Brazil", often simply "Brazil") in a version specifically performed by Geoff Muldaur is the leitmotif of the movie, although other background music is also used. Michael Kamen, who scored the film, originally recorded "Brazil" with vocals by Kate Bush. This recording was not included in the actual film or the original soundtrack release; however, it has been subsequently released on re-pressings of the soundtrack.

Releases

The film was produced by Arnon Milchan's company Embassy International Pictures (not to be confused with Joseph E. Levine's Embassy Pictures). Gilliam's original cut of the film is 142 minutes long and ends on a dark note. This version was released internationally outside the US by 20th Century Fox.

US distribution was handled by Universal. Universal executives thought the ending tested poorly, and Universal chairman Sid Sheinberg insisted on dramatically re-editing the film to give it a happy ending, cutting out the reveal that it was all in Sam's mind, a decision that Gilliam resisted vigorously.[28] As with the cult science fiction film Blade Runner (1982), which had been released three years earlier, a version of Brazil was created by the movie studio with a more consumer-friendly ending. After a lengthy delay with no sign of the film being released, Gilliam took out a full-page ad in the trade magazine Variety urging Sheinberg to release Brazil in its intended version. Gilliam soon conducted private screenings of Brazil (without the studio's approval) for film schools and local critics. On the same night Universal's award contender Out of Africa premiered in New York, Brazil was awarded the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for "Best Picture".[29] This prompted Universal to finally agree to release a modified 132-minute version supervised by Gilliam, in 1985.[6][30]

Home media

Brazil has been released four times by the Criterion Collection: First as a five-disc LaserDisc box set in 1996, a 3-disc DVD box set in '99 and '06, a single-disc DVD in '06, and a 2-disc Blu-ray set in 2012.

The 3-disc box set released in '06 looks identical in packaging to its '99 release, albeit compatible with Widescreen TV screens.

Except the single-disc version, all versions have the same special features: A 142-minute cut of the film (referred to by Gilliam as the "fifth and final cut"), Sheinberg's "Love Conquers All" cut for syndicated television, and various galleries and featurettes.

A Blu-ray of the 132-minute US version of the movie was released in the US on 12 July 2011 by Universal. It contains only that version of the film and no extra features.[31]

Critical response

The film has a 98% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, with 44 out of 45 reviewers giving positive reviews. It has received a score of 88 on Metacritic, based on 12 reviews.[32]

Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, claiming the film was "hard to follow", but displayed an affinity to being "reminded of a Chaplin film, Modern Times, and reminded, too, that in Chaplin economy and simplicity were virtues, not the enemy."[33]

Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan described the film as "the most potent piece of satiric political cinema since Dr. Strangelove".[6] Janet Maslin of The New York Times was very positive towards the film upon its release, stating "Terry Gilliam's Brazil, a jaunty, wittily observed vision of an extremely bleak future, is a superb example of the power of comedy to underscore serious ideas, even solemn ones."[34]

In 2004, Total Film named Brazil the 20th greatest British movie of all time. In 2005, Time film reviewers Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel named Brazil in an unordered list of the 100 best films of all time. In 2006, Channel 4 voted Brazil one of the "50 Films to See Before You Die", shortly before its broadcast on FilmFour. The film also ranks at number 83 in Empire magazines list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.[35]

Wired ranked Brazil number 5 in its list of the top 20 sci-fi movies.[36] Entertainment Weekly listed Brazil as the sixth best science-fiction piece of media released since 1982.[37] The magazine also ranked the film No. 13 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films".[38]

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards; for Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction (Norman Garwood, Maggie Gray)[39] According to Gilliam in an interview with Clive James in his online programme Talking in the Library, to his surprise Brazil is apparently a favourite film of the far right in America.[40]

American Film Institute Lists

Influence

Other films that drew inspiration from Brazil's cinematography, art design, and/or overall atmosphere include Jean-Pierre Jeunet's and Marc Caro's films Delicatessen (1991) and The City of Lost Children (1995),[44] the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994),[45][46] and Alex Proyas' Dark City (1998).[47][48]

Cinematographer Roger Pratt worked on Tim Burton's Batman, the production design and lighting style of which have been compared to Brazil.[49] Burton and production designer Anton Furst studied Brazil as a reference for the look of their film.[50]

The technology of Brazil inspired the design of Max Cohen's apartment in the film Pi.[51] Brazil also served as an inspiration for the film Sucker Punch (2011).[52]

Brazil has also been recognised as an inspiration for writers and artists of the steampunk sub-culture.[53][54][55]

See also


References

  1. ↑ "BRAZIL". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  2. ↑ "BFI Screenonline: Brazil (1985)". Screenonline. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  3. ↑ "Brazil (1985)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Rogers, Richard A.. "1984 to Brazil: From the Pessimism of Reality to the Hope of Dreams" (PDF). Northern Arizona University. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
  5. ↑ Bartz, Rob. "Dystopia: A Look at Utopian Societies in Literature". North Dakota State University. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Matthews, Jack (1996). "Dreaming Brazil". Brazil (Media notes). Gilliam, Terry (Director). The Criterion Collection.
  7. ↑ Paddock, Terri (17 May 2004). "20 Questions With…Jonathan Pryce". whatsonstage.com. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
  8. ↑ Kinnear, Simon (8 March 2014). "Re-Viewed: Terry Gilliam's prescient sci-fi Brazil". Digital Spy. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Brazil – The Facts". sciflicks.com. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Gilliam, Terry (Director) (1985). "Audio commentary". Brazil. The Criterion Collection.
  11. ↑ "Katherine Helmond Interview – Archive of American Television". emmytvlegends.org. 8 December 2010. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
  12. ↑ Morgan, David. "Michel Palin on BRAZIL". wideanglecloseup.com. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
  13. ↑ Brazil (The Evolution of the 54th Best British Film Ever Made). Orion books Ltd, 2001, edited by Bob McCabe. ISBN 0-7528-3792-3
  14. ↑ Taylor, Rumsey (December 2003). "Terry Gilliam". http://sensesofcinema.com/''. Senses of Cinema. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
  15. ↑ Dirks, Tim. "Brazil (1985)". http://www.filmsite.org''. AMC Filmsite.
  16. ↑ Morris, Wesley (30 April 1999). "Brazil: Paranoia with a dash of Python". San Francisco Examiner.
  17. ↑ Pulver, Andrew (2 September 2013). "Terry Gilliam blames internet for the breakdown in 'real relationships'". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 September 2013.
  18. ↑ Redmond, Sean (2004). Liquid metal: the science fiction film reader. Wallflower Press. pp. 66–69. ISBN 1-903364-87-6.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Atkinson, Michael (1 September 1998). "Bravo New Worlds". The Village Voice.
  20. ↑ Morgan, David (2012). "The Evolution of Brazil". www.criterion.com. The Criterion Collection.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Berardinelli, James. "Brazil". reelviews.net.
  22. ↑ Kuttner, C. Jerry (Spring 1994). "Beyond the Golden Age: Film Noir Since the '50s". Bright Lights Film Journal (12).
  23. ↑ "Brazil". Cinemania Movie Reviews.
  24. ↑ Sheehan, Henry (Fall 2006). "Welcome to Brazil". DGA Quarterly: Craft Journal of the Directors Guild of America II (3). Retrieved 31 October 2009.
  25. ↑ Stubbs, Phil. "Terry Gilliam talks Tideland". dreams.
  26. ↑ Orwell, George; Sonia Orwell; Ian Angus (2000). The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters, George Orwell: As I please, 1943–1945 3. David R. Godine. p. 400. 27b Canonbury Square, Islington, London N1, 18 August 1945 [as return address in correspondence]
  27. ↑ Jura, Jackie (14 July 2003). "Canonbury Photos". Orwell Today. Retrieved 24 October 2011.
  28. ↑ Frauenfelder, Mark (7 June 2012). "Terry Gilliam's Brazil letter to Universal (1985): "I feel every cut, especially the ones that sever the balls."". Boingboing.
  29. ↑ "Terry Gilliam's battle to release Brazil in US". BBC. 1 December 2011.
  30. ↑ Matthews, Jack (1987). The Battle of Brazil. ISBN 0-517-56538-2.
  31. ↑ "Brazil Blu-ray Announced". Blu-ray.com. Retrieved 22 September 2012.
  32. ↑ "Brazil Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More". Metacritic. 7 January 2010. Retrieved 22 September 2012.
  33. ↑ Ebert, Roger (17 January 1986). "Brazil". Chicago Sun-Times.
  34. ↑ Maslin, Janet (18 December 1985). "The Screen: 'Brazil', From Terry Gilliam". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 November 2010.
  35. ↑ "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". Empire. Bauer Media Group. Archived from the original on 17 August 2011. Retrieved 17 August 2011.
  36. ↑ "The Wired Sci-Fi Top 20". Wired, (10.06). June 2002.
  37. ↑ Wolk, Josh (7 May 2007). "The Sci-Fi 25: The Genre's Best Since 1982". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 21 June 2007.
  38. ↑ "The Top 50 Cult Films". Entertainment Weekly. 23 May 2003.
  39. ↑ "Brazil (1985)". NY Times. Retrieved 1 January 2009.
  40. ↑ "clivejames.com". Talking in the Library Series 3 - Terry Gilliam. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  41. ↑ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies Nominees" (PDF). American Film Institute. 2002.
  42. ↑ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) Official Ballot" (PDF). American Film Institute. 2007.
  43. ↑
  44. ↑ Ximena Gallardo C.; C. Jason Smith (2006). Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ellen Ripley. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-8264-1910-1.
  45. ↑ Ronald Bergan (2000). The Coen Brothers. New York City: Thunder's Mouth Press. pp. 148–162. ISBN 1-56025-254-5.
  46. ↑ James Berardinelli. "The Hudsucker Proxy". ReelViews.net. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
  47. ↑ Hicks, Adrienne. "DARK CITY (1998): Critical Review and Bibliography".
  48. ↑ Dunne, Susan (23 February 2006). "Welcome To Dystopia At Trinity's Cinestudio". Hartford Courant.
  49. ↑ Kehr, Dave (23 June 1989). "Effects Make Batman A Stylized, Dark Adventure". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
  50. ↑ Jones, Alan (November 1989). "Batman in Production". Cinefantastique.
  51. ↑ Adams, Sam (23 July 1998). "Pi Brain". Philadelphia City Paper.
  52. ↑ Boucher, Geoff. "'Sucker Punch': Zack Snyder says 'big, crazy fairy tale' influenced by 'Brazil'". Los Angeles Times.
  53. ↑ La Ferla, Ruth (8 May 2008). "Steampunk Moves Between 2 Worlds". The New York Times.
  54. ↑ Bebergal, Peter (26 August 2007). "The age of steampunk Nostalgia meets the future, joined carefully with brass screws". Boston Globe.
  55. ↑ Braiker, Brian (30 October 2007). "Steampunks Twist on Tech". Newsweek.

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