Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!pesnta!hplabs!qantel!lll-lcc!lll-crg!seismo!columbia!cucca!travis From: travis@cucca.UUCP (Travis Lee Winfrey) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: Re: Brazil (the movie) (MANY SPOILERS) Message-ID: <180@cucca.UUCP> Date: Sun, 2-Mar-86 03:05:20 EST Article-I.D.: cucca.180 Posted: Sun Mar 2 03:05:20 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 20:01:20 EST References: <213@mrstve.UUCP> Reply-To: travis@cucca.UUCP (Travis Lee Winfrey) Organization: Columbia University Center for Computing Activities Lines: 99 Summary: brazil is definitely not for everyone; some explanations <> [I'm new to usenet. Please don't blowtorch me if I step on some toes.] In article <213@mrstve.UUCP> mark@mrstve.UUCP (Mark Smith) writes: >Has anyone seen the movie, Brazil yet. It showed in this city for just about >6 days. Unfortunately, I was the recipient of a couple of free passes to see >this "movie" (and I use the term loosly). Even though it was free I still >felt that I was robbed. (at least of the 2 hours I had sat there!) You might want to consider leaving early next time you feel this way about a movie. I've walked out of many bad movies. If you didn't like it, you didn't like it; I probably can't persuade you that it was a great movie. After I saw it, I was really excited, and ran around offering unasked-for reviews to many of my friends. (I went to see it again just three days later!) At least three people that heard these raves from me went to see it, and they were not thrilled. More precisely, two of them left the movie horribly depressed and angry at me for having described it as funny; the other person simply said it was "too weird for me." I've been more careful to mention to people since then that 1) it was quite weird, 2) they should at least have "1984" in mind, and 3) after some thought, it really was a happy ending. Also, one of my favorite reviewers just trashed it, which broke my heart, and further proved that "some people just don't get it." > Was this supposed to be a spoof of "1984" or was it supposed to be serious? > Mark Smith, ihnp4!pur-ee!pur-phy!mrstve!mark Terry Gilliam was totally uninterested in making an easily classifiable movie. He mentioned somewhere in "American Film" how difficult this was to do with the Hollywood establishment, which refused to even release the film originally. Everyone wanted a one sentence description, and even he was unable to come up with one that made sense. As near as I could tell, and yes, I realize how ridiculous this sounds, the movie was showing some of the funnier aspects of a repressive, Orwellian society, along with a semi-conventional love story mixed in with lots of action. It is unconventional in that the heroine (Kim Greist) has her act much more together than the hero (Jonathan Pryce) from the very beginning, although he keeps trying to "save" her. I've heard people say that it was just about alienation. Well, it was and it wasn't. The main progression of the plot shows the hero moving from someone who could cheerfully and competently be part of a horrible bureaucracy, the ministry of information, without a single thought as to what he was doing to people's lives. As the restaurant scene stressed, he was a man without dreams or ambitions -- although the audience knows he does have one dream in which he flies above scenic pastures with a lovely, idealized woman. When he has to give the check to the widow, he begins to see the enormity of the evil of the whole system, and his dreams begin to reflect this with the buildings shooting up from the pastures. (Perfect.) The problems he has with his heating system serve to introduce the terrorist heating engineer (De Niro), and to give him another reason to hate the status quo, to make him more of a "terrorist" himself. (He walks in his dreams now in a dark city, unable to fly or to save his love.) Finally, when he meets the real woman of his dreams, he has to confront the worst: *his* system would destroy her, and for no good reason. He is immediately on her side, of course, but only messes things up. From this setup, the balls of the plot ricochet down the stairs until the end. The end does indeed have a depressing appearance to it, unless you consider two things. First, he did achieve the thing which was most important to him, saving his love from the system (competence with a computer is worth something!). Second, although the system did capture him, they couldn't break him as in the ending of 1984. He escaped into his dreams -- the meaning of the song, incidently, if you listen to the words. (and the line on the poster: "Brazil -- it's all in your mind.") You don't have to like the ending, but I don't think I would have believed any other. I think he won as much as he *could*; this wasn't a Rambo movie. One thing which is hard to take at first is the way Gilliam screws around with the line between reality and fantasy. The dreams are never explicitly separated from the flow of "real" events, and this can get very confusing, particularly in the shopping mall and closing scenes. If you see it again, it will make much more sense, especially now that I've 'splained everything to you. :-) I have no problem with considering this a great movie. "Best" is a tricky term that I like to avoid. After a month, it's still gaining popularity in Manhattan -- another theatre just opened with it. [One last note: Jonathan Pryce was the circus leader in "Something Evil This Way Comes" which is worth everyone's time, although it is billed as a children's movie. I've seen it on HBO.] t -- Smile. Arpa: travis@cu20b.columbia.edu, winfrey@cs.columbia.edu Bitnet: travis@cucca, tlwus@cuvma Usenet: ucbvax!mtxinu!ea!okstate!cucca!travis || !seismo!columbia!cucca!travis USMail: 612 W. 115th, #811, NYC 10025 Phone: 212-280-3704