Terry Gilliam’s never this good. Few filmmakers are ever this good. The jokes and pointed commentary aren’t just written into the script, they’re built into the sets. There’s corporate satire, the most fantastic dreams alternated and then blended with a soul-crushing reality. Broad comedy bumping up with deep tragedy. Our hero, Sam Lowery, returns a check to a woman who was overcharged for the government abduction of her husband. The premise could hardly be more absurd, but the wife’s reaction is anything but. This isn’t simply a humorous 1984, it’s Monty Python’s Requiem For a Dream.
Brazil is a clever and ambitious, humorous yet frightening, visually spectacular – every shot is bizarre and fascinating – thematically daring, surrealistic vision of a dystopian future. Bumbling, polite Brits apologetically perform bully tactics we associate with military police. Modern conveniences and the government are equally inefficient, often lethally so. Man fights with machine just as the common man hero fights the political machine. Everything breaks down and mistakes are made constantly.
The theme of escaping reality through fantasy isn’t new, but it’s never been more elating as the heroic final section of the film. Events become increasingly fantastical – watching Robert DeNiro become consumed by the mass of loose paperwork remains one of my all-time favorite images. Lowery’s dreams fully invade his reality in an epic flight of whimsy that’s breathtaking in its ambition.
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