- Welcome!
I can hardly believe as I type this now what a BIG job this feature became. I'd hoped to have a few pictures, a few links, just a little notice up that yes, I did watch this movie, and yes, I did enjoy it... Enter Trond Frittz. Fellow answers a desperate post I made in alt.fan.terry-gilliam looking for a script for the film saying "Hey! I had the same problem! So I'm making one myself! Seen my webpage?"
I hadn't, so I did, and it changed everything. The page was so earth-shatteringly good I knew this feature would have to be more than a couple of links.
It's November now; I've finished the damned thing not more than... wow, a week after the deadline, and frankly I don't know whether to feel proud or just escape into my madness like Sam... Anyway, if you're out there, Frittz, and I know you are, this one's for you.
"I'm dealing with what I think exists now. It has a lot to do with the sensibilities of people.There is a feeling things are out of control. It's as if the world were dreaming. Mind you, it's a terrible cheat in a way - writing a thing like Brazil. We don't provide any answers. We just point out what is obvious... but the "obvious" that people don't think about half the time. Since we are at our most vulnerable when we laugh or cry, I hope people will catch themselves laughing and suddenly realize, 'I shouldn't be laughing at that, that's horrendous.' That is a nice thing to do to people. It helps us to see we are all in it together."
- Terry Gilliam
released in 1985 after a prolonged battle with studio executives who had been both struck by its beauty and appalled by its grotesque side. They could neither release it or dump it, and their attempts to "fix" it only made writer/director Terry Gilliam ever more frustrated. When finally released, it got little publicity, noticed at first only by a handful of critics. Upon its video release it found its niche: auteurists, teenagers, film students, and anyone else who can appreciate a unique, startling film for what it is. It has found an audience on the 'Net, of course. We've selected the very best of that 'Net work to appear in this feature. A note: this feature is designed for those who have seen the film already. If you haven't, go to your local video store and ask for it.
Jabberwocky and Time Bandits, and after Brazil he would create such classics as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But it is in Brazil that Gilliam's talent for visual shockery and social satire is at its peak. Munchausen, great as it is, is not dangerous. And to paraphrase Anthony Burgess, when art isn't dangerous you don't want it. Brazil is dangerous. It speaks to us in Gilliam's own words and shines a cracked mirror onto the world. It combines beauty with horror, horror with fantasy, fantasy with bland reality, bland reality with deadly truth. There aren't many movies like Brazil, and in a lot of ways maybe that's a good thing, for the sake of our national sanity. But if you want to lose it for a little while then Brazil is the place to return.
timed the shooting to fall in the Orwellian year of 1984. Calling Brazil "futuristic," then, misses the point entirely. The joke is that Gilliam could have set the film at 9:45 PM today, and in a way, he did. Nor is it set in any particular country. It seems a 40s-ish America overrun by the English, or a modern England overrun by 40s American customs. As Gilliam is a native Yank who left the States while still young, the reason for this is clear. And for those of you who would have called it "futuristic" a few moments ago I hope that helps.
- Garrett Gilchrist
November 1997
