Very Cool!!!

How sad is this?

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

"Brazil" has the title, the music and the creativity upon which masterpieces are made on, but it's like an irrepressible and suffocating twirling mass of the same paperwork that poison people's lives have taken over the plot, and it's only within its core that you can understand why this is such a great movie. But a better editing would have befitted such an ambitious plot, a pity Gilliam; the artist triumphed over the director. This is an artsy film with no direction.The last Gilliam film I watched was "The Fisher King" and it suffered the same syndrome. I enjoyed it but the story was never as brilliant and soul-penetrating as in the quieter and more realistic parts. It could have done without the Red Dragon hallucinations and even that Holy Grail subplot. But what Gilliams' movies say about him is that he has a sort of childlike obsession with "conflict" as something that can only be exposed through some big-scale extravaganza fights with high-tech effects and so forth, and that's exactly what almost ruined my enjoyment of "Brazil". The film is like a big party you're invited to, you enjoy yourself, you have fun, but because of two or three incidents, you're not sure you want to live the same experience again. Now, there's no doubt that the film is brilliant and it's a great satire against the overwhelming effect of bureaucracy and even technology (although it is displayed in a retro-futuristic way), we are all literate enough to get all the Orwellian vibes from the film, and even now, I can't imagine the hell of bureaucracy without that Brazilian tempo working in my mind. So, no one who criticized "Brazil" missed the point. But it's like Gilliam wants so much to emphasize the feeling of sheer confusion induced by the whole (mis)adventure that instead of making the story confusing by maintaining a solid plinth to the narrative, he made the experience of following the film, confusing as well. At one moment, you see Sam trying to find a woman, which in the actual setting is Herculean enough a task, and another moment, he's a warrior fighting a giant Samurai. I love some artistic licenses, but talk about overkill. Gilliam had a good story at hands but he goes for sensationalism while he had enough material to design something thrilling in the content, without going for such hyperbolic action sequences. The result is uneven and infuriating. When you trust your material, you don't need some pseudo psychedelic fights, chase sequences or other wall-crashing moments, action isn't always to be treated literally. Yes, this is a world that takes some monster Godzilla-like size, but I don't care that Gilliam wanted to pay homage to Kurosawa with the Samurai-figure, just make a tribute to "Ikiru" which was a real movie about bureaucracy, and it'll be fine. The same goes with the Brazilian escapist moments, first it's poetic and dreamlike, but they are so redundant that you don't know which story you're supposed to follow in the end. It says a lot about Gilliam and his tendency to make polarizing movies when they're no need for it. Indeed, we need a story, you can't make the cleverest satire without trying to confuse the audience but, it's like some suicidal impulse that is somewhat more fascinating than the film's content. I tried to watch "Brazil" twice, the first time, I fell asleep, the second, I turned it off because I was tired of trying to figure out what point he wanted to make with this or that scene. Now. I finally made it till the end, and while I acknowledge that there was some potential in this film and some scenes are nothing short but masterpieces: the Metropolis-like shots, any scene with Katharine Helmond and Ian Holm, and some brilliant little touches like the duct on the dog's poo-hole, this is still one of the cases where the final cut should've been shorter. The element that is constantly praised by the fans is the critics against bureaucracy, well, that makes the whole fights and chases quite useless, and what about the heart of the story: Sam? Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce, was a great character, the perfect straight man to this tragicomedy. Why not making him someone who really wants to go to Brazil? Why not creating some deeper connection with the woman, not just "curiosity"? How about the Harry Tuttle guy? The film had plenty of directions to take, but it just makes his main protagonist wander in a dystopian universe, encountering the most eccentric characters, and punctuate the film with a few actions sequences and weird nightmarish intrusions.I love the way Siskel described the movie: "It beautifully beats to death one point" He nails it. This is the film the expressions "insisting upon itself" was invented for, and even the whole bureaucracy thing is a bit overrated. I don't know if this review will be useful for anyone, but if I want a great and short satire about bureaucracy, I watch "The Place That Sends You Mad" segment from "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix". Now, that's perhaps the best critic against bureaucracy ever made, and it didn't need any special effects or fight sequences.As for "Brazil", Gilliam is one hell of a director and writer, but you know, there's a reason why they also give Oscars for "editing". As I said for another Gilliam's film, it's like the directing's style stealing the story's thunder.

Terry Gilliam's films are often battles, in the case of 'Brazil', Universal Studios, being led by Sid Sheinberg, wanted to change the film to make it more appealing for a commercial audience, but Gilliam resisted. Indeed, it was always meant as a cult film, with several people walking out during test screenings. Gilliam even went as far as to put up an ad saying "Dear Sid Sheinberg, when are you going to release my film?", and put up a photo of Sid Sheinberg on television to show everyone what he looked like, and showed illegal screenings to critics. He nearly had it entirely his way, although a dream sequence in which eyeballs stare up at Sam Lowry from the ground had to be deleted from the film. Perhaps it's Gilliam's uncompromising defiance that made it such a great film.In the tradition of Orwell's '1984' and the collected writings of Franz Kafka, 'Brazil' is a chilling dystopian sci-fi, a satire on bureaucracy, an existentialist horror in the guise of an absurdist farce, and a celebration of the imagination, which blends the comic, tragic, and visionary. It clearly comes out of the 'Monty Python' films, but is much darker, and leaves a powerful and lingering impression. Gilliam's vision is a vivid, bizarre, and madly inventive representation of a bureaucratic hell, which uses absurdity and black humor to portray an oppressive and frightening existence, yet this does not to lighten or diminish the films nightmarish horror, but rather makes it more plausible and multi- dimensional. These comical elements include a hilariously cramped office, chaotically disarrayed pipes and wires, and administrative errors. The protagonist is a dreamer, someone whose ideals are completely at odds with the oppressive world he's living in, and his dreams represent his explosive imagination breaking free of the shackles daily life imposes on him, yet always get impeded by the oppressive horror of Sam's existence, and turn into nightmares, with some truly strange, creepy, and sad imagery. If you find the film incoherent, than perhaps the whole thing's an impressionist nightmare, in which it's the fundamental images, feelings, and ideas that prevail.The final act is where the film takes a turn for the dark, sinister, and dangerous. It fuses symbols of childhood and innocence, with oppression and torture to chilling effect, such as masks of baby faces, and Santa Claus. It suggests that evil can come in the form of your best friend, a common family man, just ordinary people working for a bureaucratic system. It also features a gripping chase sequence, where you feel the options closing in on our doomed protagonist. The ambiguous and thought-provoking ending, while disturbing in a sense, is Gilliam's most definitive statement on imagination triumphing over reality. It will have people debating over whether it's tragic or triumphant, in a way I think it's a metaphor for what Terry Gilliam does for a living, creating gloriously imagined alternatives to our current reality. In fact, the whole film can be seen as an allegory on Gilliam's 'David and Goliath' battle with Universal Studios to get the film released the way he wanted, the small man against the big system.

It's a pleasant watch, with quite a bit of subtle and not-so-subtle humour on bureaucracy, consumerism, fascism and inequality in the future (with a few nods to the present). Even the 2 hours feel easy, as you just keep wondering what's next in the life of the young lost protagonist. However, it's a shame that the subjects wherein are explored so lightly - one would wish deeper exploration of the ironies of dystopia/reality facing topics that are important still today - excessive security control by the state being a de-facto dictatorship, etc. The story of the protagonist also feels that a bit more ambition would have been welcome - while it's appreciated it's not a typical "selfless saving the world scenario", it could've been just a bit more... ambitious! It ends up being just a really weird love story!

Terry Gilliam once said that he never even considered his film "Brazil" a science fiction film, believe it or not. This was because it was a film that dealt with issues going on while it was being made, and some of the issues the film addresses are still relevant to some extent.This surreal satire takes place in a bleak, but highly possible, dystopian future. It is full of extremely dark comedy, beautiful, glorious production quality, and a surprisingly disturbing and unhappy ending (unless you watch the "Love Conquers All" version, which I don't recommend).It's a great film to look at, with epic sets and amazing to look at fantasy sequences that really enhance the viewing experience and makes the world that "Brazil" creates a more adventurous and thrilling environment."Brazil" is an amazing piece of filmmaking from a brilliant filmmaker.