#Brazil - Greatest film of all time??
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Aaron Fitzgerald
1984 took LSD, warped itself with satire and morphed with Monty Python. Brazil could very well be one of the greatest movies of all time. A story of a man chasing the woman he loves, dreams of clouds and safe havens, while falling uncontrollably into the depths of red tape and paperwork. An everyman, Jonathan Pryce, plays Sam Lowry, a low level clerk in a dead end job who doesn’t want a promotion. It isn’t until he becomes obsessed with a woman that he decides to climb the corporate ladder to find her. Along the way he illegally fixes his air conditioning in his apartment, fights the law enforcement, helps a suspected terrorist escape and ends up being tortured for information. Okay, not the most uplifting tale ever spun, but God it’s awesome.
Sometimes the world’s most complex horrors can begin with the simplest incident. An anal retentive clerk keeps his desk immaculate. The tiniest speck of dirt doesn’t go unnoticed. Then he spots an annoying fly buzzing around his office. Not letting this pest ruin his day he climbs up on his desk and kills the fly with a stack of papers. A moment later the dead bug drops from the ceiling and falls into a printer, changing one letter in one name, thus setting the entire story in motion.
Ian Holm plays Sam’s boss, a pathetic weasel who tricks Sam into doing paperwork for him. Holm plays the incompetent employer who can’t tie his shoes without Sam with a brilliant flare. Fearing that Sam might accept a promotion and leave him to fend for himself in his job he signs a letter for his subordinate rejecting a promotion to Information Retrieval. But that will all change when Sam realizes that by accepting a promotion he will get closer to the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately, his boss, corrupt law enforcement and red tape will force him down in into the depths of bureaucratic hell.
Whoever would think that an air conditioner repair man could be a criminal? Well, in a world run by paperwork a man who decides to operate outside the system will be hunted by the law, no matter how absurd the crime might seem. Robert DeNiro plays Harry Tuttle, a rogue repair man, who has left the system and roams the city at night searching for broken air conditioners to fix. When Sam’s air conditioner breaks and he is unable to contact Central Services to get a repair man to fix it dependable Harry Tuttle arrives in the middle of the night, dressed in black, to lend him a hand. It’s only fitting that Harry will be destroyed by the very same paperwork that he avoids.
In any good satire the villain is always on the so called good side. Michael Palin, from the Monty Python troupe, plays Jack, a sadistic officer who tortures suspects based on thin evidence. Michael Palin is charming and delightfully creepy at the same time. When we are introduced to him we don’t think he’s such a bad guy until the end when he tortures Sam to get him to talk. Can we trust our law enforcement? We create a system to help us live our lives, but can that same system end up running us?
The only motivation for Sam wanting to accept promotion is to find a woman he’s been dreaming about. In his dreams she is a timid, beautiful, damsel in distress, but in real life she is a cigarette smoking, truck driving badass who doesn’t take crap from anyone, including Sam. The closer Sam gets to having her the more the system begins to swallow him up. When we chase our dreams do we lose touch with reality? If we don’t tend to our responsibilities and just fantasize about where we’d like to be we will end up living in delusion.
The last ten minutes of the movie can really be confusing if you don’t pay attention. If you care about Sam and want him to get the girl you might really believe that what’s happening is real. He escapes the torture chamber, blows up the Information Retrieval building and ends up with his woman in a trailer in the woods. Just when you believe that everything has worked out the camera pulls back and we realize he’s still sitting in the torture chamber. Jack wasn’t able to extract any information from him and now Sam is a vegetable living in his own dream world. The look on Sam’s face at the end seems like a state of Nirvana. Did he lose? Did he win? The end is truly an ironic twist. You can be happy and sad for him simultaneously. So remember, chase your dreams without losing touch with reality.
Brazil is more than a satire. It’s more than a sci fi film or a comedy. Brazil is a commentary on modern society. It’s a mixture of the future, the past and encompasses everything that is ridiculous about the twentieth century. From women’s obsession with plastic surgery to faceless terrorists this film reflects our system and how we live our lives. If we could just stop for a moment and think about how we create our own hell maybe we could rise above the system and ultimately live our dreams.
