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From: wutka@gitpyr.UUCP (Mark Wutka)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: BRAZIL
Message-ID: <1526@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Mar-86 18:20:19 EST
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.1526
Posted: Sun Mar  9 18:20:19 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Mar-86 00:07:39 EST
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Lines: 36

I have a couple observatios/questions about _Brazil_:
 First, to whoever compared it to "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", that
is quite an interesting comparison that does seem to make alot of sense.
I hadn't thought to compare those two. I did notice one short scene that
reminded me of the early Russian film "Battleship Potamkin." The scene
with the troops marching down the steps with their machine guns looks exactly
like the scene in "Potamkin" where the Czarist troops are marching down the
stairs firing at the revolting crowd...any ideas ?
  Also, my impression of the antiquated computer terminals and such was
that Gilliam was trying to envision "1984" the way Orwell did. If I am
not mistaken, "1984" was written in the late 40's ?  I think the fact that
they had computers yet still relied heavily on men with tons of paper
and such adds to this since in those days, no one had any conception of the
vast amount of paperwork that could be saved by the computer. I seem to
remember that when one machine came out, I think it was an early UNIVAC (groan),
many people said that only 12 of them would be necessary to do all the computing
for the rest of time.
  Another thing - do you think he meant to set the story around Christmas or
that he meant to imply that they had made Christmas perpetual. The reason I
ask is that I kept thinking it had gone past Christmas in the story yet it
hadn't. Since it was obviously a mass consumption society, wouldn't it make
sense that they would try to keep everything up to the level of the period
of the year that marks the highest amount of consumption ??  George Lucas
suggested something along this line with the consumption quotas in "THX-1138."
Enough rambling...any thoughts ??

-- 
Mark Wutka
Office of Computing Services
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Ga.

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