A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #51: Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen this film and this time it gave me the creepy crawlies. This is satire done right, and the fact that after 20 years real­ity has nearly caught up with its pre­science is what makes me feel so strange. Terry Gilliam is, as you might expect, one of my favorite direc­tors, and Brazil is regarded by many to be his finest work. This review is going to be a turn­about from the last one [M. Hulot’s Holiday].

Imag­ine your­self liv­ing in a world where the government’s only con­cern is root­ing out ter­ror­ism, where bureau­cracy is so entrenched that you can’t get pub­lic doc­u­ments unless you fill out other paper­work first, where peo­ple are impris­oned indef­i­nitely for crimes they didn’t com­mit, tor­tured for infor­ma­tion they don’t have — and then charged for the ser­vice. Quick, tell me what coun­try you’re in!

Brazil is a movie about a place where the buck has been passed for so long that the focus is now on get­ting some­one else stuck with it instead of resolv­ing the issue. Brazil is a movie about a place where cor­po­rate con­for­mity is expected, unend­ing ambi­tion to power is a virtue, and con­tent­ment and imag­i­na­tion are things to be despised. Brazil is a movie about a place where no one does any sort of work that is pro­duc­tive; there is no goal but self-​preservation in every aspect of soci­ety. Infor­ma­tion is the main com­mod­ity and its labyrinthine fun­nel­ing through bureau­cratic red tape is the main source of employ­ment for those we see. Granted, there are a few out­siders who refuse to sign on the dot­ted line, and these are the ones con­sid­ered ter­ror­ists, because they refuse to sup­port the power struc­ture in all its actions.

Stuck as we are, squarely in the mid­dle of an Infor­ma­tion Age where most of the infor­ma­tion is of no sub­stance and the sub­stan­tive infor­ma­tion can­not be accessed, Brazil is prophetic in hind­sight. Yet Gilliam was obvi­ously in dia­logue with events con­tem­po­rary to the mak­ing of his film. He con­sid­ered call­ing it 1984½ and its release in 1985 seems to ful­fill that par­tic­u­lar intent.

The satire doesn’t limit itself to pol­i­tics and busi­ness, even the moti­va­tions of pri­vate life are skew­ered by Gilliam and Tom Stop­pard [who helped write the screen­play]. There are so few char­ac­ters with soul in the film that Sam Lowry’s inde­fati­ga­bil­ity is notable both for its exis­tence and per­sis­tence in the face of the face­less soci­ety [and mother] that has fos­tered him. His toil under the hands of Infor­ma­tion Retrieval becomes rife with Chris­to­log­i­cal sym­bol­ism. His even­tual cata­to­nia is, func­tion­ally at least, as tran­scen­dent as Christ’s resurrection.

• Long ram­bler com­par­ing Brazil to cur­rent Amer­i­can lead­er­ship and pol­icy.
• Rot​ten​.com arti­cle on Gilliam and Brazil.
• Brazil FAQ.
• Inter­view with Gilliam.