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From: jimc@haddock.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: Brazil -- a cautionary review
Message-ID: <90200030@haddock.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Jan-86 16:45:00 EST
Article-I.D.: haddock.90200030
Posted: Sun Jan 26 16:45:00 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 27-Jan-86 17:53:49 EST
Lines: 35
Nf-ID: #N:haddock:90200030:000:1932
Nf-From: haddock!jimc    Jan 26 16:45:00 1986


Cross _1984_ with _Alice_in_Wonderland_, toss in a little bit of Coleridge's
"Tower of Kubla Khan", and you have _Brazil_.  This surrealistic assault on
the senses, created by Englishman Terry Gilliam, is set "somewhere in the
twentieth century", where the clothing styles and typewriter keyboards of the
1940's are mysteriously superimposed atop the microwave ovens and
supercomputers of today.  A remarkably lavish production, with sets like I
have never seen before, unfolds in a hurried and often confusing manner to
find us following the familiar story of a dissatisfied bureaucrat struggling
to find meaning in a malevolently governed society.  In this blacker-than-
black comedy, we are not scared the way we were in Orwell's _1984_ or in the
1984 film adaptation of that novel, but instead are made to feel disgust at
Hollywood, consumerism, computerization, bureaucracy, and religious
commercialism which are all present in our society but taken to their logical
extreme in this hypothetical one.

I wish I could say I enjoyed myself.  At best, I found it interesting, but I
felt so overwhelmed and disjointed that the idea of being "entertained" was
quite alien to me by the time the movie ended.  The displaced feeling which
persisted long after it was over was closely akin to that very tenuous grip
on reality I sometimes feel after just waking up from a nightmare.

If you take an academic interest in the ability of cinema to create illusion,
I recommend you see it.  However, I STRONGLY recommend you leave the children
home when you see this R-rated feature; they would not understand it and
would without a doubt be horrified.

No rating.

______________________________
Jim Campbell
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