Brazil - Under Review

A film that really should've received more attention in the wake of co-writer Tom Stoppard's passing.

Brazil (1985)
When once asked where his fantasy Brazil was set, director and co-writer Terry Gilliam replied “the Belfast-Los Angeles border”. A cryptic response but a perfectly apt one for a film that draws so heavily on Federico Fellini and George Orwell that Gilliam originally wanted to call it 1984 1/2.

In a terrifying totalitarian future world, Sam Lowry (an astonishing performance from Jonathan Pryce) is a bureaucrat who daydreams his life away. That is until he makes a mistake that results in the arrest of the wrong man, the innocent Harry Buttle being sent down while ‘freelance heating engineer’ Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro on fine comedic form) roams free. Lowry tries to correct the error, and makes everything worse for everybody…

There are people in the world who don’t like Brazil. These people are incredibly unfortunate. Yes, this is a very challenging film, but while not everything makes sense (certainly not on the first viewing), you have to admire the picture’s scope - achieved on a tiny budget - and Gilliam’s ambition.

Those who didn’t get Brazil included the film’s American producers, who sought to dump the picture. Gilliam went to war with the execs in the press and won out, which is lucky for us because to lose a work of such visionary genius would’ve have been a very grave matter indeed.