Terry Gilliam's "Brazil"

Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam, is one of the best regarded dystopian films. Sam Lowry, a cog trapped in the system, dreams of escaping the bounds placed on him. He dreams of flying away and meeting a beautiful woman, who he saves from various enemies, represented by great monoliths which burst from the earth and the terrifying creatures which live inside this dreamscape city. As we see, this was leading towards the grand finale. This time Sam's vision tricks even the audience. We see the world as it appears to Sam as he escapes this nightmare through the power of imagination. It is important to remember that God himself was supposed to have created the universe by imagining it, and in Hinduism, Brahma is said to be dreaming us all. Terry Gilliam was not only showing a future potential reality, but also a present one maximized to the ludicrous. Everyone is trapped by this modern culture, and the only escape is through story and myths. This society is one with government-sanctioned terrorist attacks (this may hold relevance in the modern day, if one chooses to go down that path), of small mistakes leading to the destruction of lives, and of materiality brought to its startling conclusion (binaries being split even further than we see today). All this is allowed to happen because technology separates the individual from the people around him, from the land, and most horrifyingly, himself. And of course, in this Panglossian Model, the government utilizes this potentiality. Often the modern world is characterized by increasingly drastic separation, balkanization, departmentalization, and so on. Scientific minds find it necessary to names things, and by doing this, they separate it from the rest of the universe. They place the new discovery in categories, classifications, and kingdoms. This is healthy for that sort of thing, but I think people lose the big picture when they do this. They forget that everything is connected, that this universe is controlled by certain laws of balance (see William Blake), and that there is a great mysticism beyond numbers and words, a mysticism which many cultures have forgotten long ago.

The problem I have with Brazil is the same problem I have with all of Terry Gilliam's movies: they are too long and meandering. The man is self-indulgent, and what he really needs is a better editor, maybe during the script writing phase, to get rid of some of the fat. Don't get me wrong, Brazil has wonderful ideas, cinematography, writing, and direction—it really just needs to be trimmed and shaped, much like a hedge bush. There is so much potential here, and Gilliam comes so close to succeeding. I often feel after coming out of many of his movies drained, like I want to take a nap—and that's not a good thing. Any entertainment should at the very least be interesting. Brazil is interesting, but somehow also manages to be terribly boring. What an odd paradox the director suffers. Like I said, there are some great ideas here. Sam Lawry is seemingly trapped in his own hell. He doesn't appear to realize it on the surface, but subconsciously he dreams of being free—free of social pressure, to love whom he chooses, and to choose his own career. This is, of course, represented by the winged angel which he imagines himself to be, flying over the countryside, fighting enemies, saving the damsel in distress, and living happily ever after in a cottage. Brazil's dystopia is one of bureaucracy—no one ever takes responsibility for anything because they can blame it on someone else's department. It is a world of rigid dichotomies. One of the most visible ones is the road surrounded by billboards of beautiful landscape, but beyond is industrial desert—Baudrillard's "desert of the real". A sense of hopelessness pervades everything in the film. There is no hope of escape for Sam or Jill. The only one truly free is Tuttle, the Heating Engineer, who can do his work without reprisal. It is interesting that is an American playing Tuttle. I am not sure if Gilliam was trying to get at something here: that the American sense of individualism is a good thing?

The world which Gilliam creates is essentially our own reality brought to a certain end. We see the problems presented by technology, which is constantly breaking down. These seemingly tiny malfunctions often lead to spheres of greater consequence—remember, the whole series of events was a result of a literal bug in a printer by some nameless man who never appears again. This initial error is followed by more, until in the end, poor Sam sits in a chair being tortured, and Jill, who was completely innocent of all crimes, is dead. It's always the innocent who suffer in such a huge, complex machine. We can see echoes of Brazil's totalitarian government today. The U.S. government is always expanding surveillance. It's always using these terrorist attacks to enter new wars and pass new laws restricting citizens' freedoms. Examples include The Oklahoma City Bombing, the 911 attacks, and the underwear bomber. All these were done dubiously and with a tightly controlled flow of information from the U.S. government to broadcast media. One could argue that this continued encroachment on the Constitution can only be done with an ignorant population. So what makes the "sheeple" such "sheeple"? It's their technology. We are inundated with so many distractions: sports, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, iPhones, iPads, iPods, taxes, and debt. Many of these modern conveniences (and inconveniences) serve to make us not pay attention to the world around us. I picture a quiet suburban neighborhood, the windows full of blaring television screens (ala Farenheit 451). There is no real culture here, only people trapped in their own little multi-national corporation produced worlds which Horkheimer and Adorno wrote about.

Brazil paints a picture a government gone wild, and my guess would be that this came as a natural progression. There were no massive revolutions which were a direct cause for such a system (the script is deliciously vague on how this Britain came about). A communist revolt of the underclass would seemingly not put in such a pyramid structure, and I would assume this wasn't so far in the future that the revolters would become top-down rulers so quickly—but isn't that the mechanisms of man? Our own faults. It is highly relevant that this film took place on Christmas. Throughout the world, this was a day of death/rebirth. The Christ-figure in this story is Sam Lawry. His hands get holes driven into them, and in his final fantasy, he is in a church with crosses appearing on almost every wall. The Mother Mary/Mary Magdalene tripartite goddess is there, eternally reliving the fall of man. Sam Lawry is the sun god trying to bring spiritual light to a forsaken world. He can't. This reality is too far gone. There is no going back.