Thoughts on a rewatch of Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL (1985)

(Saw this again courtesy of Alamo Drafthouse and their 1985 "Time Capsule" series - but it should be noted a) this is a Christmas movie so it is the season, and b) Tom Stoppard just died, and he is a major reason this script is good as it is, so RIP)

DUCTS!

"Listen, *kid, we're all in it together." 

The longer you live on this Earth and the more that you a) have to fill out endless forms and paperwork and to do this or that to get to this or that person for the most menial tasks and b) we are not only in the grip of but, at least for some of the more shallow ones and bootlicking bastards, accepting and sort of welcoming of the Fascist Daddies and overlords. Well, this is except of course for the ones who do fight back in their own way or are so devastated that they can't help but sob uncontrollably at the horror of it all (when the late Mr. Buttle's widow realizes that her husband truly is gone look how she goes from 70 to 1000 in like thirty seconds... wouldn't you?)

When I was younger watching this I could try to pretend to have some distance from what world this was showing, and yet Gilliam was right when he said, upon this film getting its re-release this past summer again at the Film Forum, that we are in the documentary that is Brazil now. 

Gilliam once described this as Franz Kafka meets Walter Mitty, and if I had a tiny critique is is that a couple of the dream scenes don't hold up so well (or maybe I just never got the whole Samurai-menace look), but no matter since the Kafka aspect is the strongest part of this. 1984 1/2 sure sure, but this gets what Kafka was after more than anything else that was adapted (well, maybe second to Welles and the Trial, but this is more accessible), only the brilliant subversion is that Sam is not some lonely Joseph K or a Gregor Samsa turning into a bug but someone who understands (slowly but surely with Buttle and more quickly with Jill) that injustice is... AWFUL and dehumanizing and tears the whole society apart. There is no efficiency in this "Somewhere" of the 20th century, only cruelty and ego and... ducts. Way too many fucking ducts.

It isn't just all the bloody paperwork or the roving squads of militias sanctioned by the government - and I have to think if he hasn't seen it before there is little doubt if Kilmar Abrego Garcia ever watches Brazil he might have to tear his ribs out in recognition-agony by the halfway point - it's also the gaggles of middle-aged ridiculous ladies who do every single absurd and abhorrent thing to hold on to their looks and "beauty" and how everyone just keeps going about their business as a bomb goes off in a restaurant or on a street (when Jill tells Sam to help the people who have just been literally bombed out, it is one of the few truly human moments seen in the picture). You don't think they exist today? Have you heard of a little show called 90 Day Fiancé?

I think the strongest thing about Brazil isn't even its visual scope or signature style, though that does set it apart from nearly every other film of the 1980s (even Blade Runner), but its humor. 

This is such a funny movie, and the attitudes and line deliveries ("Triplets? My god, how time flies") are so sharp and the timing of stuff like the shared desk when Lowery is at his new job (co writer McKeowen as the snively other guy who won't give up his computer by the way) or the one shot that seems to be driving up to some nuclear power plants or something and then the bum who looks to be pouring something into it is revealed to be outside of some shop in the wide shot. 

But it is also important that Sam is funny in his way - has he met *actual* terrorists? It is only his first day - and that is a necessarily component to making all of the wretched darkness and horrible things that Gilliam and Stoppard and company are showing us work so patently.

It is like a... Christmas cookie spiked with kerosene. And yes, what a Christmas movie! Jesus would have a few cross words with Central Services and the Information Ministry and so on!  Bottom line, Brazil is a dark comedy about what it means to be actually subversive - not to conflate with terrorism - in a society that is so busy about dotting the Is crossing the Ts and slamming people into bags to send away to be tortured, that the most daring thing to do is to... dream. 

(Fun fact, De Niro is only 4 years older than Jonathan Pryce)