Not necessarily an easy movie to score on account of its Da-Da-ism.
Gilliam hit popular notoriety with his bizarre cartoon interludes during the 'Monty Python' series. The man clearly had a an amazing imagination mixed with an equivalent sense of humour. There was going to be a lot more to come. Not all of it was good. But 'Brazil' was surely his magnum opus.
His work entails more than a shade of Python (naturally), hints of Roald Dahl, and something else uniquely him.
Brazil is astonishing. It's almost a take on 1984, with a pretty ineffectual hero standing-in for equally ineffectual Winston Smith. He is an honest and diligent man who discovers a foul-up which he tries to put right, only for things to go disastrously wrong. In time, he finds himself fighting the system and pursuing a rebellious young woman truck driver (Orwell's 'Julia'). As the movie progresses, we are led through a series of tableaux which leave us wondering just how much of what we see is actually in the real world, and how much is the hero's deluded imagination. For those who like neat little denouements it can be a disappointment. The best thing, I think, is to just go along for the ride.
That ride takes us through some great parodies of the present. We have set-piece monolithic ministries with incomprehensible bureaucracy. There are legions of dangerously dumb guards, a ruined environment that is boarded-out of view by idealised advertisements and much more. There are also some great characters played very believably by an equally great cast. Small, visual Pythonesque gags pop-up all along the way. Rich old women desperately trying to stay young, cramped little offices were desk space is fought over, unreliable technology and Kafka-esquire confusion. The sniffing machine that got a little too intimate was one of many little touches that had me laughing out loud.
You can get lost in this movie. And perhaps that's what Gilliam intended. Whatever it is, it's a piece of unique theatre that does what it does extremely well. You just may not enjoy it. A bit like Dali's cloth watch.
Gilliam hit popular notoriety with his bizarre cartoon interludes during the 'Monty Python' series. The man clearly had a an amazing imagination mixed with an equivalent sense of humour. There was going to be a lot more to come. Not all of it was good. But 'Brazil' was surely his magnum opus.
His work entails more than a shade of Python (naturally), hints of Roald Dahl, and something else uniquely him.
Brazil is astonishing. It's almost a take on 1984, with a pretty ineffectual hero standing-in for equally ineffectual Winston Smith. He is an honest and diligent man who discovers a foul-up which he tries to put right, only for things to go disastrously wrong. In time, he finds himself fighting the system and pursuing a rebellious young woman truck driver (Orwell's 'Julia'). As the movie progresses, we are led through a series of tableaux which leave us wondering just how much of what we see is actually in the real world, and how much is the hero's deluded imagination. For those who like neat little denouements it can be a disappointment. The best thing, I think, is to just go along for the ride.
That ride takes us through some great parodies of the present. We have set-piece monolithic ministries with incomprehensible bureaucracy. There are legions of dangerously dumb guards, a ruined environment that is boarded-out of view by idealised advertisements and much more. There are also some great characters played very believably by an equally great cast. Small, visual Pythonesque gags pop-up all along the way. Rich old women desperately trying to stay young, cramped little offices were desk space is fought over, unreliable technology and Kafka-esquire confusion. The sniffing machine that got a little too intimate was one of many little touches that had me laughing out loud.
You can get lost in this movie. And perhaps that's what Gilliam intended. Whatever it is, it's a piece of unique theatre that does what it does extremely well. You just may not enjoy it. A bit like Dali's cloth watch.