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| Brazil |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 142 |
| Public Rating: 9.01 (89 votes) |
Director: Terry Gilliam |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy/Fantasy |
Year: 1985 |
| Writer(s): Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown, Tom Stoppard |
| Distributor: 1 |
| Reviewed by: Vadim Rizov |
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Surely one of the most original films ever made, Terry Gilliam's Brazil remains his most influential work, and certainly one of his best. It's not only a collection of marvelous images - it's a thinking movie, one that has things to say about individualilty, the nature of myths, and other good stuff. Viewed for a second time (and for the first time in a theater), it was much easier for me to see the faults in the movie. The first time I saw it, I was blown away - the movie's cumulative force simply swept away any doubts I might have had about it.
Sam Lowry (the constantly underrated Jonathan Pryce) is a lowly beaurocrat "Sometime in the 20th Century." His mother (Katherine Helmond) wants him to get a promotion, and pulls strings with her connections to get him an unwanted one. He yells at her in frustration that he really doesn't have any ambition or aspirations at all - "Not even dreams!" In fact, dreams are all Sam really has. In them, he's a soaring, flying hero, rescuing his dream-girl from hideously arrayed Forces of Darkness. In real life, Sam is sleepwalking - until he meets his dream girl, Jill Layton (Kim Greist, never heard from again; Gilliam was unhappy with her performance, and cut the importance of her part accordingly). And then the system begins to move.
Gilliam was concerned, he said, about how much individuals will give up for security. The movie certainly makes that concern clear. It's not an awfully fresh subject, but Gilliam puts a brilliant new spin on it. Contrary to what you might think, 142 minues isn't an excessive length (although I could easily live without the restaurant scene, a hideous nightmare of overkill and overstatement). However, the movie is simply too episodic - unable to maintain a sustained narrative, Gilliam must rely upon the strength of his actors, visuals, and individual scenes. Everything's very amusing, but one senses a lack of rhythm every now and then that's disconcerting. And, viewed in a theater, Brazil is often simply too loud, flashy, gaudy and excessive - traits that DVD and video viewings minimize. On the other hand, only in a theater can you experience the movie fully, including all the little details you might miss on video. For example, Lowry's apartment is full of posters of 30s and 40s female film stars, a detail I missed on first viewing. This time around I also noticed his quite witty quotation from the Odessa steps sequence of Eisenstein's evergreen Battleship Potemkin.
No matter what its faults, Brazil is still, ultimately, a brilliant, unique and wonderful work. I bet the third time around, I'll finally see it with all its faults and brilliances, and love it even more than the first time I saw it.
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