Amazon.com Essentials:
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and
a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of
outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him
making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all
of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may,
Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The
Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic
nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry
(Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a
software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous
Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and
causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen,
one Mr. Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert
De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in
unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled as
a miscreant.
The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision
of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of
small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously
screened his cut for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who
named it the best movie of 1985 and virtually embarrassed Universal
into releasing it. This DVD version of Brazil is the special
director's cut that first appeared in Criterion's comprehensive (and
expensive) six-disc laser package in 1996. --Jim Emerson
Amazon.com Essentials:
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and
a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of
outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him
making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all
of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may,
Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The
Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic
nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry
(Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a
software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous
Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and
causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen,
one Mr. Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert
De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in
unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled as
a miscreant.
The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision
of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of
small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously
screened his cut for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who
named it the best movie of 1985 and virtually embarrassed Universal
into releasing it. --Jim Emerson
Amazon.com Essentials:
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and
a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of
outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him
making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all
of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may,
Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The
Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic
nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry
(Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a
software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous
Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and
causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen,
one Mr. Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert
De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in
unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled as
a miscreant.
The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision
of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of
small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously
screened his cut for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who
named it the best movie of 1985 and virtually embarrassed Universal
into releasing it. This DVD version of Brazil is the special
director's cut that first appeared in Criterion's comprehensive (and
expensive) six-disc laser package in 1996. Although the DVD (at a
fraction of the price) doesn't include that set's many extras, it's
still a bargain. --Jim Emerson
