Brazil

WHAT DOES BIG BROTHER WANT?  I’ve seen this movie a number of times and you know?  I’m not sure.  They seem to want to maintain the status quo, through a gigantic, inefficient bueraucracy.  Citizenry is not controlled per se, but they certainly are kept in their places through this massively inefficient system that makes it impossible to get anywhere or do anything.

WHAT DOES THE REBEL WANT?  Like Winston Smith and THX-1138, Sam wants the embrace of a good woman, in this case Jill, literally the woman of Sam’s dreams.  Beyond that, Sam, spectacularly, has no plan; once he gets his mitts on Jill he is completely at a loss and must think fast to improvise a plan.  And Sam’s just not that good an improvisor.

WHAT DOES THE REBEL GET?  Oh, it doesn’t end well for the rebel.

IS THERE AN UPPER CLASS, AND DO THEY HAVE ANY FUN?  There is and they do, although their fun is occasionally interrupted by “terrorist attacks” (which are never explained) and botched plastic surgeries.  But even the upper class gets bossed around by waitstaff and bueraucrats and, this being England, everyone is terribly afraid of what others think of them.

DOES THE SOCIETY CHANGE AS A RESULT OF THE REBEL’S ACTIONS?  In his dreams.

NOTES: Strangely, Jesus Christ is a major character in both this movie and in THX-1138.  I’m not sure why.  It doesn’t make sense for an oppressive dictatorship to choose Christianity as a state religion, as it does in THX, and whatever metaphorical connection there is to the narrative of either film eludes me.  Neither THX nor Sam are particularly Christ-like; they confront no authority and are not sacrificed for the sake of publicity.  They stand for nothing outside of themselves.  I think the Christmas motif running through Brazil is there to emphasize the hypocrisy of the society’s priorities, but again I’m not sure.  Strangely, in Sam’s dreams (however much of the movie those constitute) one of the symbols tossed on the rubbish heap by the robot samurai is a neon cross.  So it seems like the movie is saying that the evil bueraucracy that Sam fights against is trying to destroy, among other things, Christianity.  Is Gilliam pro-Christianity or anti?  After Life of Brian I would have guessed anti (Christianity, not Christ), but here he seems to want to make some distinction between Christ and society’s perversion of the Christ message.

I love the idea that everything in the movie happens because there’s a guy running around out there fixing people’s heating problems without the proper paperwork.

One question that haunts me is, are there terrorists at all, after all?  If not, who’s blowing stuff up?

Another question is, where does Sam’s dream begin?  Does it begin at the start of his torture session, or much earlier?

Terry Gilliam’s movies are generally filled with Gilliamisms, but they are here this time in full force: the fish-eye lenses, the overstuffed production design, the imaginative, extensive use of miniatures, the sets a little too small to contain the action.

The acting is generally strong in this movie with Katherine Helmond a particular standout, but I gotta say, Michael Palin is freaking amazing.  I’ve always been a fan, but his performance here as a polite, efficient, paternal torturer is just astonishing.  Plus, for my personal delight, there are no fewer than than three strongly Steven-Rattazzi-like actors in this movie: Jonathan Pryce, Ian Holm and Bob Hoskins, all of whom Rattazzi has been compared to in his career (strangely, with usually the word “Pakistani” appended, as in “Steven Rattazzi resembles a Pakistani Ian Holm in his role in Cymbeline,” this about a man named Rattazzi).  Terry Gilliam should just have Rattazzi play all the male roles in his movies and be done with it.

THX-1138

WHAT DOES BIG BROTHER WANT?  Not much — total control of all human behavior, including thought, emotions and sexual response.

WHAT DOES THE REBEL WANT?  The rebellion starts, as rebellions will, with sex.  That was Winston Smith’s problem and it’s THX’s problem too.  He’s willing to risk it all — the steady job at the police-robot factory, the mood-enhancing meds, the beige, block-like food, the holographic porn, the masturbation machine, for the embrace of a good woman.

WHAT DOES THE REBEL GET?  He gets thrown in prison.  At least I think it’s prison.  It doesn’t act much like a prison.  Things are kind of left open-ended in this movie, even prison.  In any case, with the help of a hologram come-to-life (shades of Agent Smith) he escapes.

IS THERE AN UPPER CLASS, AND DO THEY HAVE ANY FUN?  It doesn’t seem like there’s anyone in charge at all, just a series of interlocking bureaucracies that just kind of muddle through each crisis as it comes along.

DOES THE SOCIETY CHANGE AS A RESULT OF THE REBELS ACTIONS?  No.  In fact, as it develops, it is this society’s inability to bend its rules even a little bit that allows THX to finally escape.

NOTES: This is the Futuristic Dystopia boiled down to its barest bones.  The narrative is kept at ground level — well, the sub-basement level, actually.  Observational/behavioral in the extreme.  There is no explanation of why this society is the way it is, or why THX’s mate is unhappy, or how a hologram  comes to life, or how THX escapes from prison.  The rebel doesn’t want to change things or seize control of the state or bring down Big Brother, he just wants to get the hell out of there (and even then it takes him more than half the movie to come to that decision). 

It’s almost as though this is a prison-break movie made for the entertainment of the citizens in the city in the movie.  In fact, it would have been a cool ending to have the last image, then have that flicker off and see that, all along, we were watching a movie being watched by a beige-block-munching pair of folks in their white suits, and the male turns to the female and says “That was nice” and the female says “Yes, a good fantasy” and they turn off the light and go to sleep.

Another cool ending would have THX climbing up to the surface,opening a hatch and finding himself on the surface of the Death Star.  Or in the middle of the street in Modesto in 1962 as Paul LeMat races with Harrison Ford.

Or in the middle of a 19th-century village that turns out to actually be a 21st-century village — where everyone who lives there is actually a ghost.