Terry Gilliam's best work so far, this film surpasses all the other dystopia films, except possibly Blade Runner. The difference here is that with the intense themes you have a healthy dose of dark comedy and fantasy. you want a surreal, tour de force of a film? you have Brazil.
Avante Garde--a commentary on bureaucracy! A little slow and thus the captivation is uninspired. The future is bleak; the future is weird, suffocating and a theres is no bravado here. No more are we humans but humanoids.
This is the best surrealistic/futuristic noir I've ever seen. Such a marvelous film, it reminds me a lot of the short movie "The Crimson Permanent Assurance", but way deeper and disturbing. An instant favourite!
There's a scene here were Robert Deniro and Johnathan Price, are escaping from a torture chamber, when suddenly the wind picks up and newspapers and rubbish from the streets, swells up and completely covers DeNiro, when it blows away, he's gone, vanished beneath the trash.
My idea of hell is endless paperwork. And Brazil distills the fears and anxieties of beurocracy into perfect metaphors and scenes like the one mentioned above, where a man is completely erased by the disgarded tissue of the world.
Aside from that, this has some of Gilliam's best direction, music, sets, writing, and performers. It's working title was "1984 1/2" a combo of George Orwell's dystopian sci-fi novel "1984" and Fellini's oneiric and surreal study of the creative process in his film "8 1/2", and if your familiar with these works, this film is a pretty accurat middle ground, albiet in a "Monty Python" kinda way.
Maybe my favorite film ever (it changes from time to time), books have been written about it, and the directors struggle to get it made when studio executives demanded a happier ending.
The imagination and fantasy vs buerocracy and reality. A future which looks like the past. A "future" where terrorism is a daily fact of life, a nauisance like foul weather. A hilarious hell-hole, and pure Terry Gilliam goodness.
This movie was weird. And I mean really, really weird. I enjoyed it, but it's abstract parts kept breaking my suspension of belief. Just when I was starting to get emotionally involved in the story, really incoherent stuff started to happen and it pulled me out of the movie. It all makes sense with the plot, of course, but it was still too much for me. But with all thing's said, it is very good. -Oh and technically, it's a masterpiece.
A "BRAIN-WASHED" worker has a dismal life, a fucked up boss, a boring job and dreams of being sumwhere better...
This will kinda relate to EVERYBODY i guess..
great fantasy/surrealism on this one....
I saw this masterpiece art film at HMV recently... Go get em'....
Terry Gilliam's bizarre and unique vision of an unspecified time in the 20th century stars Johnathon Pryce as a mid level bureaucrat haunted by dreams of a beautiful woman. When an administrative error results in the arrest and death of an innocent man, he actually meets her and takes on the fascistic establishment (in which bureaucracy has literally gone mad) to "save" her from them. This is surely the film that Terry Gilliam was born to make; it's so uniquely "his" that no-one else could possibly have made it. In fact it's so out of the box that the studio only released it under extreme duress. The production design of retro-styled technology combined with war-time era fashions and propaganda is fantastic and is a clear influence on Dark City which itself is often cited as the template for The Matrix. Many of the images seen here are hilarious and bizarre in an extremely similar way to Gilliam's own animations in the Monty Python TV series, and it visually references everything from Battleship Potemkin to The Empire Strikes Back. The criticism that it's a little self-indulgent and a case of style over substance can be leveled at it, but it's style is brilliant and it's perfectly intertwined with social satire and a lot of very funny Pythonesque humour. Add a fantastic supporting cast including Ian Holm, Ian Richardson, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins and Robert DeNiro as a guerilla heating engineer and you have a film like no other.
I had originally planned only to see about 5 minutes of the movie just to see if the file was right, but I ended up watching all two-and-a-half hours. Very bizarre surrealistic film. Moving in places, with great sound and visuals (though the latter were a kind of overkill). I sort of found the ending a little awkward, but on the whole, the film was a winner. A nice satire on red tape. It also has one of the best romantic lines in cinema: "Care for a little necrophilia?" Question: Why does everyone associate this film with de Niro? He was hardly there :s
WOW. I'm speechless, this movie was totally BRILLIANT. I mean, yes gilliam's style is there, but all the touch, all the references, all the ideas, all the critical view and.. and this ending that I never saw coming? No, this movie was simply brilliant, I so love futuristic movie with a depressing twist but a big side of heroic hope. OMG, it was fabulous!
Maybe not Gilliam's msterpiece as described by many but a really interessting view at a very strange future. Pryce is good and De Niro, Holm and Hoskins is great!
Gilliam's best film is without a doubt Tideland but this is still a good movie.
This movie is very strange, but that's what I like about it. I mean after all it is Terry Gilliam's dream of dystopia. Outside of Monty Python this has been my favorite work of Terry Gilliam to date.
So Brazil is pretty much completely insane. That's the point, I know, but seriously it was crazy. I enjoyed it a lot, although I always prefer movies that are a little more emotionally stable and less like a fully realized and fleshed-out surreal nightmare.
A fantastic, confusing, explosive dystopia about the excessive control of bureaucracy that is very contemporary and still powerful nowadays. The bizarre dream sequences, fantastic costumes and sets, and the humorous script and acting form a unique film, for better or worse, a movie that stands alone. "Brazil" is a masterpiece, and though it's not my favorite type of film, this one blew me away.
My favorite and what I consider Terry Gilliam?s masterpiece. This bizarre sci-fi is centered around Sam Lowry, a dreamer, and also a bit of stickler for paper work. This film is laced with great satirical messages about current events which are still quite a bit relatable now. There is plastic surgery (Sam?s mother), the big paper machine that is the government?s red tape, and there is even technology to make fun of here. Jonathan Pryce is perfect as the jittery lead who develops a backbone, and then there is the wonderful Bob DeNiro who has a nice and funny small role. It has a nice ensemble of Gilliam actors as well including Ian Holm, Michael Palin, and Jim Broadbent. Be warned don?t get confused with the studio altered version the one with a happy ending. You want the original director?s cut which is quite a bit more haunting.
Underlying plot is very interesting but there are a lot of dream scenes that I couldn't care less about.. Plus, it aged very badly making it hard to not laugh at times. The concept of the film is great but badly presented. If you are into weird stuff, you must see this! I did not regret to see it but I just expected more.
MCT:August 2, 2008
MCT:July 27, 2008
MCT:July 22, 2008
MCT:July 11, 2008
MCT:June 21, 2008
MCT:June 13, 2008
