Brazil
1985 · Directed by Terry Gilliam
Original language: English
- comedy
- science fiction
The story
Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.
What it’s like
Cramped, overlaid frames of ducts, pipes and paper-stacked desks in sickly sepia and tarnished green, with a dense, fussy visual clutter that feels like being trapped inside a broken machine. Interiors glow under flickering fluorescents and dim, mustard-yellow lamps, while the dream sequences bloom in soft clouds and bright, storybook light. The camera swoops and lurches through towering offices and crumbling apartments, and the soundtrack swings between jaunty swing-era jazz, tinny muzak and sudden thuds of industrial clatter. This is a satirical nightmare with a dark comic edge, the kind of unsettling, absurd tone that suits a late night alone or a long, slightly feverish afternoon. Its pacing is manic and sprawling, with a meek clerk's gentle daydreams gradually colliding with a grinding, indifferent state. Violence is occasional and sudden, with a few brutal, bloody moments, and there is nothing sexual, though the mood is persistently bleak, paranoid and disorienting. It suits viewers who enjoy bleak, inventive satire, surreal visual extravagance and the grim humour of a system that will not stop.
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