Never Say Disc: Brazil

Brazil (1985) is one of those movies that lurks in the back of our collective subconscious, its influence generally felt rather than referenced directly (Futurama shout-outs notwithstanding). An image, like the interrogation baby mask or the microscopic computer screens, will bubble up occasionally, and of course, there's the legendary ending... and everything Terry Gilliam had to do to make sure that ending even made it into the film. But Brazil is a movie with something to say, a visually and conceptually dense satire of the world into which it was released... and more appropriate to our own world with each passing year. So, for the fortieth anniversary of the American release, Never Say Dice is going to take a ride down the pneumatic tube into the all-too familiar nightmare of Brazil, both as dark satire and as a holiday film. - B

A Side: Brazil certainly isn’t a Christmas movie that I’d watch every year. Come to think of it, this may be only the second or third time I’ve ever seen it. The first, not surprisingly, was at Bugsy’s behest on a summer break during college. If this is the second time, or even the third, it's once again at Bugsy’s behest. I wouldn’t say the movie is one I’ve avoided on purpose, though. One probably wouldn’t even consider this a Christmas movie, even if that's when it takes place, and I’d likely agree with that - I have a similar stance on films like Die Hard or Ghostbusters II. If Brazil isn’t a holiday movie though, then what is it, exactly? A dystopian look into a future that sort of is, already? A sci-fi flick with flights of fantasy? A surrealist dark comedy mixed with a love story? A bit of all of those things? Is it worth giving a film your time if even it can't make up its own mind about what kind of story it wants to tell?

Brazil is dystopian, without question. You don’t have to go far into the film before you start making comparisons to 1984. Overreaching bureaucracy, vintage/futuristic tech that's almost nonsensical? Covered there. Sci-fi with flights of fantasy? Approaching the movie as traditional sci-fi, may fail to hit the mark - we’re not in any sort of spaceship or seeing alien worlds here. The tech can seem futuristic though, even if it's also somehow vintage at the same time. One could possibly call it "near sci-fi." Sci-fi adjacent? One can’t question our main character’s daydreams delve into the fantastic, unless we’re already used to donning fantasy armor with steampunk wings to swordfight a …a samurai? Am I even remembering this movie right? I just finished watching it five minutes ago, so you'd think I’d know. For all that, you also don’t have to dig too deep to find chuckles here and  there about the world the movie portrays... even if those chuckles are really laughing at ourselves while our own world looks more and more like the one imagined back in 1985. A romantic love story? There is a string of love, which is also possibly another fantasy in our main character’s head, but it's still something that drives him along even more than the ever-churning bureaucracy.

But is it a holiday movie? I’d normally be inclined to say "no" right off. Sure, it's set at Christmas, with gifts being handed out, decorations in stores, and parties going on. While it could potentially be set at another time of year, it'd be hard to remove the trappings completely. That fits with my thoughts on other questionably "holiday" films. There's one thing we see in most "real" holiday movies though, and it's one thing Brazil mentions multiple times: togetherness. It's shown on posters in the background. Spoken by characters... We’re all in this together. That's really what the holidays are about, or at least what they're supposed to be about. Politically in the United States, all sides of the aisle will take time to show a little extra care, give an extra smile, or lend a hand. After all, we’re all in this together. Even when the other eleven months out of the year, they’re spending their time being the antithesis of the character they'd call their Saviour, doing the opposite of what they say they believe when it comes to loving thy neighbors, doing unto others and the like. That's a theme of the holiday though, We’re all in this together.... even if some of us don’t always realize it, or even actively hurt others through their actions, we’re still all in this together. Perhaps, then, this really is a holiday movie... but one more like the real world, where we all use the holiday season as a time to live the fantasy that we really are in this together for the good of all - but in a way that centers us, personally... just like Brazil's main character's fantasies where he gets to be the hero, happy and extricated from the rest of the world. One last time though, for those in the back, you don’t have to like it, but try to remember the whole year round, not just the holiday season, we really are all in this together. For all of us, not just ourselves.  

Bugsy, what is Brazil to you?

B Side: It's no surprise that you found Brazil a confusing muddle even after a couple of viewings, because I've seen the movie more times than I can count and it's still a confusing muddle. Much of that is by design, of course - Terry Gilliam was the warped mind behind the dreamlike animations connecting Monty Python sketches, and his films, especially the early ones, tend to operate on the same kind of twisted, gleefully inconsistent logic that defined Python. But I think you hit on something important as well, in that it doesn't quite know what sort of film it wants to be. Genre, even by my definition as an implied agreement between creator and audience, can be constraining, and it's easy to see Sam's head exploding with ideas and images in the movie poster as being a stand-in for Gilliam himself... especially with the resources of a major studio. But the sketch comedy vibe that powered Time Bandits wouldn't work here, and to Gilliam's credit, he doesn't return to that well. But Brazil never fully commits to standard story structure or nightmare/dream logic, and is ultimately unable to to find the queasy midpoint it so clearly seeks. 

This criticism isn't intended to write off or bash the movie - there are many reasons this is one of my favorite films, and no truly ambitious creative effort can ever be perfect. And ambitious it is. Brazil was like nothing ever put onscreen before, and is most successful when pushing boundaries of visual storytelling and worldbuilding through design. Where it falls short is finding an emotional core: audience investment in Sam Lowry as a character comes almost entirely from Jonathan Pryce's brilliant performance and his role as protagonist. The last two times I saw this film, it was with friends. The first commented that it was incredible how quickly Sam ruins his life at the earliest available opportunity and the second (who, I should point out, is female) compared Sam to a "nice guy" stalker, inserting himself into the life of a woman he knows nothing about (but finds attractive), ruining her life and ultimately getting her killed... but we're supposed to feel bad for him at the end! Plenty of this is by design, Sam is knowingly portrayed as oblivious and self-centered - think of the scene where he's seated on a train while a pregnant disabled woman is forced to stand, but the film ultimately expects us to sympathize with him and his experiences, both real and imagined. Jill, on the other hand, is defined almost entirely through Sam's pursuit once he enters the picture, obliviating the role she held as moral audience stand-in for the Tuttle/Buttle fiasco. Some of the blame for this apparently lies with Gilliam himself, who cut a lot of Jill's scenes out of dislike for Kim Griest's performance. But with Jill's characterization excised, it leaves Sam alone as the sole complex (if flawed) character in a world of the (brilliantly portrayed) cartoon caricatures one might expect in a film helmed by an animator.

But what a detailed, discomforting cartoon world it is! There's a sensibility I've seen far more in video games like Fallout and Dishonored than film, let alone major Hollywood productions, where the darker aspects of the world are given humanity and even individuality without making them any less devestating and evil. The same stormtroopers we see carry out horrific acts of violence and cruelty are also shown practicing Christmas carols and complaining about their uncomfortable uniforms, and the scene where they're burning is portrayed as stark horror (even to Sam) rather than glorious retribution. The random access nature of these kinds of game may ultimately be a better fit, letting the audience seek out these kinds of moments themselves rather than being forced to jam them into a few seconds of runtime, competing for attention with actual plot elements. In non-interactive media, The Simpsons and (again) Futurama probably come closest, and it's notable that the creators of these shows grew up on the same material that inspired Gilliam (particularly Mad magazine), not to mention Gilliam's own work with Monty Python. In another era, Gilliam might have skipped film entirely and gone from animation straight to games. Although, as  The Battle of Brazil: Terry Gilliam v. Universal Pictures in the Fight to the Final Cut (an extremely informative book in my own journey to understanding the complex, thorny relationship between art and capital) reminds us, the fights Gilliam had with the Hollywood system are being constantly replayed in the games industry. The system twists ever inward, installing itself into every aspect of our lives, ultimately forming a hideous mass as incomprehensible as it is unstoppable. Hey, I know a movie about that...

And speaking of games, as Never Say Dice's resident Paranoia fanatic expert, I should probably weigh in on the relationship between Brazil and my favorite tabletop RPG. The first edition of the game came out a year before Brazil (in 1984, naturally), so the film has existed as a natural point of comparison for nearly the entirety of the game's existence and is an undeniable influence on every subsequent edition... and likely every person that's tried to run it. For all of that, I don't tend to pull all that much from Brazil directly. Sure, there are the layers of baffling bureaucracy, the constant surveillance, the ruthless, faceless nature of the security state. Even Brazil's central conceit, that people are forced to pay for their own torture interrogation "information retrieval" is consistent with my own iteration of Alpha Complex. But in Paranoia, the torture occurs offscreen. There are no crying children, no devastated families, pain and death are comic gags the player characters bounce back from... and when they run out of lives, the player just rolls up another one. Brazil, on the other hand, makes all of this disturbingly real, to a degree I was unaware of until my most recent viewing. The opening scenes had me gasping out loud at how similar they are to ICE raids of today, including black bagging and the destruction of people's homes. The goons are terrifyingly identical to today's massively militarized police. At least Mrs. Buttle got something of an explanation as to what was happening (read out loud by the original Arthur Dent, no less)... victims of today's raids don't even get that. But those happen to a... different group of people, and it's telling that there's nary a person of color in the world of Brazil. Although, like in V for Vendetta and the fascist fantasies of one Steven Miller, there are believably disturbing ways that could have been brought about.... but I don't believe this was the intent - which remind us that Brazil is, despite its best efforts, ultimately a movie of its time. The forced viewpoint of a white male protagonist who hails from a background of wealth, privilege, and power, who actually has a great deal of control over his own life (which, to be fair, ultimately has disastrous consequences) is major aspect of that... and contrasting him with Michael Palin's monstrous professional torturer character doesn't really change things. Ultimately, this blunts the effectiveness of the film's satire to some degree, since we get to go "well, if I was living in this nightmare world, I would fight back, or at least pay more attention than this oblivious moron." Maybe if Jill's working class character has been allowed to develop, there could have been more of the perspective of people who the system exclusively operates on, never getting the benefits from working within it that Sam does.

 So Brazil is a flawed film, never quite achieving (or even fully establishing) its goals... but that's fine. There are certainly worse artistic crimes than a creator's reaching exceeding their grasp and being tied to the time in which a work was made. It's still a momentous, brilliant work, reflecting ugly aspects of ourselves that only become clearer with each passing year.  And I really could keep talking about it for page after page... but this post has already gone long, and I've said what I wanted to say. It's a freedom that we still have, and we need to use it while we still can. Given how much Brazil has already gotten right, it's only a matter of time until that too is sucked away down the duct... or drifting away as it's dismantled in the interrogation chair.

Stuff your questions and comments in a pneumatic tube (it knows where to go) or email them to  neversaydice20@gmail.com.