Brazil (film)

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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)
Gross revenue	$9,929,000 (USA)
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.

It seems to be totally unrelated to the actual country of Brazil, aside from its justice system, which Gilliam describes as a "documentary" of South American and 80% of the world's countries^[1]. Instead it evokes the melancholy, dreamlike quality of its theme song, an old English translation of 1939 Brazilian song, Aquarela do Brasil. See also Brazil (mythical island). 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."^[2]

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Style 2.1 Themes 2.2 Art design 2.3 Music 3 Cast 4 Releases 4.1 Theatrical releases 4.2 Video releases 5 Critical response 6 Trivia 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

[edit] Synopsis

While the exact setting of the film is left intentionally ambiguous, Brazil takes place "somewhere in the 20th Century." The movie recounts the story of Sam Lowry, a low level worker who is one of the last remaining people aware of the government's overreaching control over everything. Sam, however, is too afraid and refuses promotions so that he may stay unresponsible for the horrendous crimes of the government, and is a hero despite being unimportant and weak.

Both anti-totalitarian government and anti-bureaucracy, the movie uses satire to make points showing just how possible it is for a totalitarian government to rule. For instance, the secretary who transcribes the torture scenes is cheerful and unquestioning, which Terry Gilliam makes sure to point out in the DVD commentary as "those kind of people". For more themes read below.

[edit] Style

Ratings
Argentina:	16
Australia:	M
Brazil:	14
Chile:	18
France:	12
United Kingdom:	15
United States:	R

[edit] Themes

Gilliam sometimes 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).^[2] All are about the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible."^[2]

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, which also pays tribute to the influence of Fellini's 8½. In fact, the scene where the hero meets the girl of his dreams, and she drives away in her car is straight from 8½; many other scenes are also clearly inspired.

[edit] Art design

Brazil is noteworthy for the way its strong visual imagery tends to overwhelm 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 government building's gigantic lobby is set off by a maintenance man's floor buffing machine, trailing a long cord of flex-duct.

These ducts are a physical representation of Brazil's endless bureaucracy, and also appear to be a social class structure motif.^{[citation needed]} In the working-class Buttle home, members of the Buttle 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 proportional to the invasiveness of ducts – and all ducts end in the dictatorial Department of Information Retrieval.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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
• Derrick O'Connor as Dowser
• Ian Holm as Mr. Kurtzman
• Jim Broadbent as Dr. Jaffe
• Brian Miller as Mr. Buttle
• Barbara Hicks as Mrs. Alma Terrain
• Charles McKeown as Harvey Lime
• Kathryn Pogson as Shirley
• Bryan Pringle as Spiro (waiter)
• Sheila Reid as Mrs. Buttle
• Derek Deadman as Bill (Dept. of Works, repairing Buttle's ceiling)
• Nigel Planer as Charlie (Dept. of Works, repairing Buttle's ceiling)
• Gorden Kaye as M.O.I. Lobby Porter
• Jack Purvis as Dr. Chapman
• Elizabeth Spender as Alison/'Barbara' Lint
• Myrtle Devenish as Typist in Jack's Office
• Holly Gilliam as Holly Lint
• Terry Gilliam as smoking man at Shang-ri La Towers

[edit] Releases

[edit] 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.^[2][3]

[edit] Video releases

In North America, the film was released on VHS and Laserdisc in the 131-minute US version. A slightly modified 142-minute version of the original European cut was first made available in a 5-disc Criterion Collection laserdisc box set in 1996, and 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).^[4]

Sheinberg's edit, the 94-minute 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 the Criterion laserdisc box set, and subsequent DVD three-disc set in 1999 (both of 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 original DVD release is not enhanced for newer widescreen TVs. 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.

[edit] Critical response

Harlan Ellison declared Brazil to be "the finest SF movie ever made."^[2]

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.^[2]

Wired Magazine ranked Brazil number 5 in its list of the top 20 sci-fi movies.^[5]

[edit] 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.^[6]
• In a recent interview with MTV, Terry Gilliam said that at the end of nine months of filming he lost all feeling in his legs and entered a catatonic state for a week.^[7]
• 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), which Gilliam co-directed. This music has been deleted from the Sheinberg edit of the film.
• Production Design inspiration from Brazil can be seen in the Coen Brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy^{[citation needed]}
• In the video game Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Sam Fisher tells a security guard "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. A response given by a guard when asked "Is there anything else?" has been "Yeah, don't forget your 27B(stroke)6".
• 27B was the number of George Orwell's apartment in London.
• The opening line of the British heavy-metal band Cradle of Filth song "Lord Abortion" ("care for a little necrophilia?") is a quote from Brazil (voiced by Kim Greist in the film but delivered here by Toni King, Dani's wife). The torture room scene in the "From the Cradle to Enslave" video is also a Brazil homage.
• The beeping sounds that can be heard during the fire fight are similar to the sound effects of the automate video game Super Missile Defense.
• During the escape from the ministry building near the end of the film, government soldiers parody the famous "Odessa Steps" sequence from the propaganda film The Battleship Potemkin. Instead of a baby carriage rolling down the stairs after the Tsar's soldiers kill the mother, it is a janitor's cleaning machine that rolls down the stairs soon after the janitor is killed.

[edit] See also

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

[edit] References

1. ^ Audio commentary. Criterion Collection edition of Brazil
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Matthews, Jack. "Dreaming Brazil". Essay accompanying DVD release by The Criterion Collection. 
3. ^ The clashes between Sheinberg and Gilliam are also documented in Matthews' book The Battle of Brazil (1987, ISBN 0-517-56538-2).
4. ^ Terry Gilliam in his audio commentary for Brazil, released by The Criterion Collection on laserdisc 1995 and re-released on DVD in 1999 and 2006
5. ^ Wired Magazine, Issue 10.06, Jun 2002 (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/scifi.html?pg=6)
6. ^ Terry Gilliam in his audio commentary for Brazil, released by The Criterion Collection on laserdisc 1995 and re-released on DVD in 1999 and 2006
7. ^ http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1543143/10132006/story.jhtml

[edit] Further reading

• Jack Matthews, The Battle of Brazil (1987), ISBN 0-517-56538-2.

[edit] External links

• Brazil at the Internet Movie Database
• Brazil at Filmsite.org
• Brazil at Rotten Tomatoes
• Review by Science Fiction Weekly
• DGA magazine interview with Gilliam
• A semiotic analysis
• Why this film is called Brazil

Films directed by Terry Gilliam
Monty Python and the Holy Grail • Jabberwocky • Time Bandits • The Crimson Permanent Assurance • Brazil • The Adventures of Baron Munchausen • The Fisher King • Twelve Monkeys • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas • The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (unfinished) • The Brothers Grimm • Tideland