Silver Screen Resolution, Take Two: Brazil

For my 2018 Resolution Project, I decided to take a page out of Lane’s book and do my own Silver Screen Resolution (hence the Take Two part of the title). There are a lot of movies out there I haven’t seen but feel like I should have, or movies that I’ve simply wanted to see and have yet to get around to it. With a deadline of some kind, now I’ll have to finally make a point to find them, get them, and watch them. My rules for the resolution are slightly different in that:

1. They must be spec-fic (this has not changed).
2. The movie will not be one that is in theaters or that would be part of a Sound Off!
3. They don’t have to be popular – or even something folks have heard about.

But I’ve decided to take my resolution to the next level as well, since I had more than 12 movies on my list that I wanted to see. And since we’re in “Take Two” mode, I might as well up the ante: I will instead be seeing two spec fic movies per month rather than just one. And now let us continue the theme of weird cities in the future!

Contains spoilers.

Brazil is another movie I found while at work. Nestled in the Criterion Collection area, the image of a flying man coming out of a wall of filing cabinets is something that’s going to catch my eye. The description on the back, while not very explanatory, was enough to make me wonder.

In the dystopian masterpiece Brazil, Jonathan Pryce plays Sam Lowry, a daydreaming everyman who finds himself caught in the soul-crushing gears of a nightmarish bureaucracy. This cautionary tale by Terry Gilliam, one of the great films of the 1980s, has come to be esteemed alongside anti-totalitarian works by the likes of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. And in terms of set design, cinematography, music, and effects, Brazil is a nonstop dazzler.

I was wary for a long time because I’d watched The Adventures of Baron Munchausen when I was little and thought it was one of the most bizarre things I’d seen (this coming from the kid who watched Aliens when she was 10), and then a few years back I took a stab at Time Bandits and wasn’t too into that either. Monty Python works aside, I was beginning to think that Terry Gilliam’s works were weird, and while I enjoy weird, it’s not my particular flavor of weird. They’re the sort of movies that leave you staring at the credits with your eyes scrunched up in confusion as you say, “O….kay?”

In the future, there’s always paperwork.

Sadly, the same can be said for Brazil (at least for me). While there were elements that were downright impressive, overall the movie got to a point where it made less and less sense, plot devices were weak, and I eventually started checking the time wondering when it would be over.

The sets for Brazil were easily the most notable part of the film. I don’t know where some of these scenes took place — for example, the large silo-type area where Sam is taken near the end of the film. It looked like a real facility of some kind. If not, then I’m impressed with whatever effects they used. But even some of the smaller sets, such as Sam’s apartment after Bob Hoskin’s character and his partner have essentially taken it apart, are well done. The attention to detail helps make it what it is.

I also enjoyed Sam’s dreams/daydreams in which he’s a man with a set of mechanical wings flying through a beautiful sky. Eventually he starts fighting bad guys who represent elements of the bureaucracy he’s stuck with in real life — and he does so with a sword. I wanted that story instead. I wanted the fantasy story because it started to be a lot more entertaining than his real life, even when things started kicking off there.

The biggest problem with this movie is that it starts off strong and then the plot just sort of falls apart. Mostly because Sam believes he’s been dreaming about a woman from reality. While yes, he has a woman in his daydreams, he’s never seen her before. And then suddenly Jill shows up in real life and he’s convinced he’s in love with her and has to find her. That’s his motivation. Not realizing that the world he works for sucks. Not wanting to change anything. Even though the movie begins with a mistake on the part of the giant bureaucratic machine that leads to the torture and death of an innocent man, that thread gets lost in the “I have to find that woman!” trope (and hmm, where did we just see this?). Poor Jill (Kim Greist) doesn’t even have a chance in this story. All she was doing was trying to figure out what the hell happened to her downstairs neighbor (who had a wife and two kids, by the way) and then her life essentially gets ruined by Sam. While it is true that eventually she was going to get picked up by Sam’s department, I’m still not 100% sure why. Because she was making a fuss? But Sam seems to be convinced she’s a terrorist, and he’s actually the one who ends up making her life infinitely worse. Props to Jill for trying to get him the hell away from her — only to inexplicably have sex with him later. For no reason whatsoever. It made absolutely no sense for her to just up and sleep with him. Sam never explained himself in any way to her except for mentioning he was dreaming about her and that he was in love with her. He doesn’t say that his department is looking for her, he doesn’t admit he thinks she might be carrying an explosive, he doesn’t ever tell her he knows about the screw-up at the beginning of the movie. Nothing. He just jumps into her life and ultimately gets her killed. YUP. And there is no reason she should have died. Way to go, Sam.

The end of the movie started to really drag. It’s almost 2.5 hours long, and the last 10 minutes I could have done without. Things started happening to Sam that made no sense and I sat in my chair guessing what was going on. Was he hallucinating? Had he not actually escaped and this was all in his head? Was he plugged into some machine, Matrix-style? Was this all actually a dream? Was the whole movie a dream? Finally it’s revealed, and my second guess was actually right. The movie ends rather 1984-esque, only with the main character slightly worse off. So I guess you could say this is a full-on dystopia. Nothing changes. No one wins. No one learns anything. The machine keeps on grinding people and paperwork. And it’s annoying. You can’t even say Sam’s dreams got him in that position because it was his obsession with a dream woman that got him there and it didn’t even have to.

Dystopia at its worst — a lot of firepower and plenty of paperwork.

I’m not mad. Just disappointed.

I guess in some ways I should have expected it. Movies in the Criterion Collection have never impressed me. I wouldn’t say I’m some kind of film snob — there are just films in there that aren’t that great, and there are others that are good, but I wouldn’t call them anything particularly special. Again, the sets are great, the suit Sam wears that has the wings is really cool, it starts off promising, and there are some fantastic actors involved — Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Peter Vaughan, Jim Broadbent, and, much to my surprise, Robert De Niro. When he first appears you can’t clearly see him and I thought, “That guy sounds like Robert De Niro,” and once his face is shown, “Holy cow, it is Robert De Niro!” I think this is the second most unexpected role I’ve seen him in (the first being the gay pirate captain in Stardust). He’s not in the movie very long, sadly, but he’s an interesting character when he does show up.

At the end of the day, however, the plot stumbles, never recovers, and I was left annoyed and occasionally yelling questions at the screen. I guess Terry Gilliam movies just really aren’t my flavor of weird.

All images courtesy Nicole Taft.