Brazil (film)

Brazil
Directed by	Terry Gilliam
Produced by	Arnon Milchan
Written by	Terry Gilliam Tom Stoppard Charles McKeown
Starring	Jonathan Pryce Kim Greist Michael Palin Robert De Niro Katherine Helmond Bob Hoskins Ian Holm
Music by	Michael Kamen
Cinematography	Roger Pratt
Editing by	Julian Doyle
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox (Europe) Universal Pictures (US)
Release date(s)	February 20, 1985 February 22, 1985 December 18, 1985
Running time	142 min. (original version)
Language	English
Budget	$15,000,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Brazil (first released on February 20, 1985 in France) is a dystopic black comedy feature film directed by Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. It was written by Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. It stars Jonathan Pryce, and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm. Co-writer McKeown also has a small role.

Jack Mathews, movie critic and author of The Battle of Brazil (1987), characterized the film as "satirizing the bureaucratic, largely dysfunctional industrial world that had been driving [Gilliam] crazy all his life."^[1]

Synopsis

Beginning "somewhere in the 20th century" at 8:49PM, the retro-futuristic world of Brazil is a gritty, post-apocalyptic, urban landscape in which terrorist attacks, counter-terrorist measures and a bureaucratic quagmire make everyday life difficult.

The film centers around Sam Lowry (Pryce), a low-level bureaucrat technician prone to daydreaming and fantasizing. Lowry inadvertently becomes entangled in terrorist intrigue when the woman he dreams about (Greist) turns out to be the neighbour of Mr. Buttle, a man who is falsely arrested and killed as a terrorist, instead of a Mr. Tuttle; all due to a typographical error caused by a bug that falls into a teleprinter, turning "Tuttle" into "Buttle".

As the Ministry of Information's jackbooted officers try to stop a wave of terrorist bombings, Sam attempts to discover the fate of Buttle and the identity of his "dream woman". Lowry's childhood friend, Jack (Palin), tortures dissidents as a government interrogator, and warns Sam that his investigation into terrorism-linked individuals could lead to Sam's downfall.

Style

This section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.

Themes

Gilliam refers to this film as the second of a trilogy of movies, starting with Time Bandits (1981) and ending with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989).^[1] All are about the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible."^[1]

John Scalzi's Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies describes the film as a dystopian satire.

Brazil's government totalitarian bureaucracy is analogous to Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Gilliam has said that Brazil was inspired by Nineteen Eighty-Four, but is written from today's perspective rather than looking to the future like Orwell's novel. In Gilliam's words Brazil was, "The Nineteen Eighty-Four for 1984." In fact, Gilliam's working title for the movie was 1984½.

Art design

Brazil is noteworthy for the way its strong visual imagery overwhelms the plot. One visual element which figures prominently in the movie is the ducts, specifically the snakelike "flex-ducts" used in modern construction. The film opens with an advertisement on a household television for different styles of ducting available for homes, which is then blown up in a terrorist bombing.

Lowry's apartment is dominated by a wall consisting entirely of metal panels which conceal an incorrigible air-conditioning system, and his hero is the rebelling mechanic Tuttle, who is the only person able to tame this monster. Later, Lowry lunches with his mother, a friend of his mother's and the friend's socially challenged daughter in a restaurant dominated by a giant centerpiece where the "flowers" are actually flex-ducts. After that, when Lowry makes an unusual (and potentially seditious) nighttime visit to his office, the emptiness of the corporation's gigantic lobby is set off by a maintenance man's floor buffing machine, trailing a long cord of flex-duct.

Ducts also appear to be a social class structure motif.^{[citation needed]} In the working-class Buttle home, the family 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, but make their presence felt as an undertone, particularly 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 Department of Information Retrieval, there are no ducts at all. Poverty and powerlessness are inversely proportional to the invasiveness of ducts – and all ducts end in the dictatorial Department of Information Retrieval.

Music

The song "Aquarela do Brasil" is the core tune in the movie, although various other pieces of background music appear. The score was written by Michael Kamen, who also composed music for Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The tune is broken down into two parts for the music. The leading tune, the part to which the words are sung, is generally used in the higher points. The eight-note backbeat ("dum dum dum, dum te dum te dum") is generally used alone and to a more sarcastic effect.

Cast

• Jonathan Pryce as Sam Lowry

• Kim Greist as Jill Layton

• Michael Palin as Jack Lint

• Robert De Niro as Archibald “Harry” Tuttle

• Katherine Helmond as Mrs. Ida Lowry

• Bob Hoskins as Spoor

• Ian Holm as Mr. Kurtzman

• Jim Broadbent as Dr. Jaffe

• Brian Miller as Mr. Buttle

• Kathryn Pogson as Shirley

Releases

Theatrical releases

The movie 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, a decision that Gilliam resisted vigorously. As with Blade Runner, 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. Eventually, after Gilliam conducted secret private screenings (without the studio's knowledge), Brazil was awarded the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for "Best Picture", which prompted Universal to finally agree to release a modified 131-minute version supervised by Gilliam, in 1985.^[1][2]

Video releases

In North America, the film was released on VHS and Laserdisc in the 131-minute US version. A slightly modified version of the original European cut is currently available on DVD (referred to in the director's commentary as the "fifth and final cut", it uses the American cloud opening instead of a stark blank screen setting the time and place).

Sheinberg's edit, the so-called "Love Conquers All" version, was shown on syndicated television and was first made available for sale to consumers as a separate disc in a five-disc Criterion Collection Brazil laserdisc box set in 1996, and subsequent DVD three-disc set in 1999 (which also featured a special video documentary version of Jack Mathews' book, with new Gilliam interviews and tape-recorded interviews from Sid Sheinberg for the original book).

The box set presents the feature film in its correct aspect ratio for the first time, but the version on the DVD is not enhanced for newer widescreen HDTVs. New separate 16:9-enhanced editions of the film in both a complete set and separate film-only disc were re-issued on DVD by Criterion on September 5th, 2006.

Critical response

Harlan Ellison declared Brazil to be "the finest SF movie ever made."^[1]

In 2004 the magazine Total Film named Brazil the 20th greatest British movie of all time. In 2005 Time magazine's film reviewers Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel named Brazil in an unranked 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 BBC Four.

Critic Kenneth Turan described the film as "the most potent piece of satiric political cinema since Dr. Strangelove.^[1]

Trivia

• Robert DeNiro originally wanted to play Jack, but Gilliam had already promised the role to Michael Palin. DeNiro still wanted to be in the film, and so was cast as Tuttle instead. ^{[citation needed]}
• In a recent interview with MTV, Terry Gilliam said he not only lost all feeling in his legs for a week, but also entered a catatonic state due to the extensive filming he had been doing for the past nine months. ^[3]
• The movie that Sam's employees watch has stock music that also appears in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (from Launcelot's assault on the castle to save the prince). This music has been deleted from the Sheinberg edit of the film. ^{[citation needed]}
• This movie was the inspiration for the Coen Brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy ^{[citation needed]}
• In the Game Splinter Cell Chaos Theory , Sam Fisher tells a security guard that "Pretend I'm Harry Tuttle" " I'm an ill-tempered, heavily-armed heating engineer asking about your ventilation system" and " The adventure, the travel" in a reference to his work as a spy and enter areas without recognition for anyone

See also

• List of differences in the versions of Brazil
• List of films recut by studio
• Brazil (mythical island)
• Nineteen Eighty-Four

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Matthews, Jack. "Dreaming Brazil". Essay accompanying DVD release by The Criterion Collection.
2. ^ The clashes between Sheinberg and Gilliam are also documented in Matthews' book The Battle of Brazil (1987, ISBN 0517565382).
3. ^ http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1543143/10132006/story.jhtml

Further reading

• Jack Matthews, The Battle of Brazil (1987), ISBN 0517565382.

External links

• Brazil at the Internet Movie Database
• Brazil at Filmsite.org
• Brazil at Rotten Tomatoes
• Review by Science Fiction Weekly
• Brazil - Unofficial fan-page

Categories

Find

Find