RUTZ Classic Movies: Brazil

Directed By Terry Gilliam

Line that stays with me: “There you are, your own number on your very own door. And behind that door, your very own office! Welcome to the team, DZ-015 ”

Essay Warning: There are no spoilers or story details. I want to offer the emotion that a film can access within us. Plus I think the best way to watch a film is by not knowing anything about it. Just Go In…So if you haven’t watched this film yet please don’t read this essay. Read it afterwards so we can enjoy the “feeling” together.

When hearts were entertained in June

We stood beneath an amber moon

And softly whispered 'some day soon'
We kissed and clung together

Then tomorrow was another day

The morning found me miles away

With still a million things to say
Now when twilight beams the skies above

Recalling thrills of our love

There's one thing I'm certain of
Return I will to old Brazil

Brazil lyrics by Ary Barroso

The more I try to breakdown Brazil the more I come back to the song that inspired it. It is the only real answer to a film full of questions. Are things really that bad? Isn’t life all about “Promotion”? As people we all stand in different groups when it comes to standard of living and facing our society with unwavering honesty. One person will look at some of the miserable conditions all around this country and say it should not be like this. Another will look at the same conditions and say that’s the way things are, let me live my life. My life filled with promise and promotion. Brazil deals heavily on this terrible battle always at hand when living in this industrial world. In our search for happiness we constantly take detours, usually when we cannot perceive what is at hand or endure while trying to keep a roof over our heads. You take a chance. You want to live and dive into a journey where you will experience a breakthrough during some life changing moments when everything comes together just right. The song refers to Brazil more as a memory than an actual place. A time when everything came together and you didn’t have a worry in the world. Grabbing a moment and living it to its fullest potential. Brazil is just that. A film done with extreme care of the once in a lifetime kind, as if the film director believed “well if this is my last film, at least I made Brazil”.

The song romanticizes the idea of once in a lifetime moments. Lasting memories, which is all Sam Lowry is left with by the end of the film. In the beginning of the film I wonder, what has Sam Lowry been up to all these years? How long has he been dreaming? Coming into work late didn’t seem to be a big deal, so he was obviously comfortable with his bitter lifestyle. It didn’t bother Mr.M. Kurtzmann, Sam’s boss played by Ian Holm in a performance that will always make me laugh especially when he says “What a pathetic creature I am”. That is the stunning achievement of this film; it can make you laugh one minute and cry the next. Terrific ideas, scenes and performances all going in various directions that it would be shortsighted to treat it as some other classic movie with a grand message, even though it has one of those too.

Brazil is a satire. A very funny one, I forget sometimes because I get very excited about the overall collection of ideas on display. While I’m watching the film, I’m usually laughing and screaming. The performances all worked out to make sure you laugh and somehow take it seriously as well, a very tightrope to walk. That sort of tension is established early in the film when a poor family’s peaceful night turns into an absolute nightmare due to an error from the Ministry of Information. The breadwinner of the household, Mr. Buttle, gets arrested in a horrifying manner by the totalitarian government; they even crush the family’s Christmas tree. Still at the end of that scene I find myself laughing to the “and here’s my receipt for your receipt” dialog.  That’s Brazil magic; it offers various sensations, laughter, suspense, appreciation, shock, sadness and realization.  Ideas in performances and composition thought out for years. Terry Gilliam’s dedication to his production’s strange wonderful mix of George Orwell’s 1984, Fellini and Film Noir (plus he’s a Monty Python member) is omnipresent. Making everything come together like he has made admirers of Brazil remember the film like some great day in which they try to remember every detail. Others can’t get over the devastating ending.  Some viewers do not get it at all. People who love Brazil just love it. Maybe because it deals with subjects other films ignore. In Brazil our hero comes to the conclusion that the system he works for is worse than he thought. That he was part of a system that got an innocent man killed and near the end of the film was trying to kill the girl of his dreams. Not many films decide to be that honest with us and respect our intelligence to find our way around.

Who was Sam Lowry? A man that wanted to fly, a man who wanted to be left alone in pathetic peace before succumbing to the lifestyle of the people around him. His job had a perfect structure, his boss desperately needs him on the day to day and he did not want promotion. Living to dreaming or waiting to escape it seems. Sam’s co-workers also want to escape. They’re usually watching classic films when they should be working, one day they’re watching Casablanca, another film that deals with a memory of a great romance and a couple trying to escape. Sam Lowry was a man who gave up on finding meaning and was not attracted by anything his society was offering. Only in his dreams did he find hope. I love watching those magical dream sequences. The score floating us along as our hero flies high above everything he knows, free with all the time in world. The same beautiful woman constantly appears in our hero’s dreams.  Now put yourself in Sam’s shoes and think about that. What if tomorrow you bumped into a person you’ve been dreaming about for years? I don’t know about you but I would think it means something. I would have to speak to that person or feel like I missed out on something beyond me. (I think the dream idea itself is a direct homage to Fellini who was said to get most of his best ideas from his dreams.) Sam is put in that position except he’s in love with his dream girl. When Sam Lowry sees Jill Layton for the first time, his whole life changes, he wants to know her so bad he’s willing to get promoted.

People not facing reality is a major subject in Brazil. Sam asks his friend Jack Lint, “How are things going?” Jack says great, wonderful. Later you see him quarrel with his wife.  Sam’s mother never wants to face the fact that she is an old woman. Throughout the film we always see her with the plastic surgeon Dr. Jaffe (hilariously played by Jim Broadbent) who says one of funniest lines in the film “I’ll make you look twenty years younger”. Instead of admitting that they’ve made a mistake the Ministry of Information decides to kill a pestering witness.  Sam never wanted to face reality but like most of us he was forced to. When Sam’s dream girl Jill becomes enemy of the state, he no longer decides to hide behind his hollow facade. Sam puts his life on the line for her when he kidnaps her out of the Ministry of Information building.  The following sequence with Sam Lowry begging his dream girl to trust him and the adventure that ensues afterwards is a beautiful testament of Terry Gilliam’s vision. You can enjoy the sequence simply as is, which is funny, exciting and moving and you can also breakdown the sequence to enjoy its rich subtext. The sequence begins like many courtships with a man asking a woman to trust him. Just like in real life (a woman that respects herself) Jill doesn’t make it easy for him and by the end Sam is hanging on for dear life. Afterwards the couple is fine until they run into turmoil down the road and find themselves in a situation where they say “we have to lose the house”. I do not think for a second that Terry Gilliam was just trying to be funny when he put that line in there.

Brazil’s glory is always there to be discovered. A film that begs us to dream again and live life to the fullest before it is too late. Sometimes we forget that because the film is so damn funny and offers fantastic imagery. We end up nerd gazing about the production which is always interesting in every way possible.  From the “retro-futurism” production design layered with comical ducts to amazing dolly shots, great makeup, top notch performances and the possibility that you could always find something new when you watch it. In my last viewing I saw the letters M.O.I. (Ministry of Information) imprinted on Mr. M. Kurtzmann’s coffee mug and several other accessories on his desk. The attention to detail in Brazil sometimes makes you treat it more like a painting than a film. We keep watching it to find things we might have missed and to our amusement we usually do. Plus it has Robert DeNiro as a hero in Sam’s bureaucratic world saving Sam from first world problems saying “We’re all in it together”. Still I never forget that harrowing scene with Mrs. Buttle screaming “What have you done with his body?” That scene always reminds me of the heart of gold at the center of this film. That scene with its tears of rage and injustice truly hits home and makes people who understand that pain fall in love with this film.

We want to do so much in our lifetime. The older you get the harder it is to accomplish some of the things you want to do. Brazil always leaves me with that feeling of hope and simple truth, that in order to accomplish great things we must act upon them.  Some viewers may have wanted a happy ending but that would have destroyed the film’s idealism with romanticizing great moments in our lives.  At the end of the film when Sam Lowry is dreaming that some revolution is going to come save his life, to me that moment is the same delusion as people in the autumn of their years grand hope to win the lottery. In desperate times, we all hope to be saved. I can still remember the fever in 2008 when a large majority in this country believed Obama was the answer to all our problems. That’s what makes the ending of Brazil so brilliant, the minute you start to believe that Sam might make it out OK, (even though nothing in Sam’s reality points in that direction) you discover a great lesson about seeing things as they truly are, that’s Mr. Gilliam being honest with us as people. Honest enough to say no you are simply dreaming. Change is not going to be that easy. For Sam Lowry it was too late. For some of us right now it is too late. I think of Sam at the end of the film not only as a tragic hero but as a synonym for anyone of us in a retirement home near the end of our lives. All we will be left with is our memories. Our great “Brazil” like moments when we truly lived. In the world we live in we are promised strife. If we want to majorly change things in the world we inhabit like Sam Lowry tried to do, we will encounter tremendous grief. Terry Gilliam was simply being honest with us. We will all be gone like Sam Lowry is at the end of the film. That is an important fact to remember as we go rushing through our days. In life we are usually trying to feel a certain way again, to recapture a sort of greatness. Sam Lowry found his through loving Jill. It can be anything creating art, raising children, the path that makes you feel free. All I know is that when you find that path, your life will be changed forever. You will spend the rest of your life trying to either keep that feeling or find it again. Poor Sam only had one night with his love and then you have some people who say “High school was the best time in my life” (I do not think that’s a good thing but it makes sense that people would say that.) Thus once again I go back to the song, which romanticizes the great moments in our lives and glows in the reverence that maybe one day I won’t be able to go back to that place and time, so I better enjoy it while I can…..Or continue to fight in order to return to “Old Brazil”.

When hearts were entertained in June

We stood beneath an amber moon

And softly whispered 'some day soon'
We kissed and clung together

Then tomorrow was another day

The morning found me miles away

With still a million things to say
Now when twilight beams the skies above

Recalling thrills of our love

There's one thing I'm certain of
Return I will to old Brazil


ABOUT RCM: Rutz Classic Movies is dedicated on writing film essays for films that in Rutz's opinion, have not gotten the credit they deserve. Next Essay: Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love

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