Brazil is a black comedy set in an alternate reality, the film says 'Somewhere in the 20th century', probably in England. The world is ruled by 'The Ministry' which serves as a place where everything is ultra-organized and super efficient, but everyone seems to be happy because everything is convenient. Every room has little televisions and behind the walls there are tons of tubes and wires.The main character, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low-level government worker who has fantasies of him flying and saving a beautiful woman trapped in a cage. This dream is shown intermittently in the film. His mother, Ida (Katherine Helmond), is a rich woman who gets face-lifts from Dr. Jaffe (Jim Brodbent) and wants her son to be a high-level worker by putting his name in some of the most prestigious jobs, but Sam seems not worried about that. It seems like everyone else wants him to wake up and be shallow just like everyone else.
The plot of the film starts when a government worker accidentally messes up an arrest form and gets the wrong man. The police break in and begin a ridiculous arrest scene; break all the windows, bust up the apartment above theirs and put a sack cloth over the man’s head - Mr. Buttle. Then Sam is shown as a very patient man who has to put up with his nervous and incompetent boss, Mr. Kurtzman (Ian Holm). Sam seems distracted because on his way to work he sees the woman of his dreams. She is a truck driver and rebel, Jill Layton (Kim Greist), who does not want anything with him.
The plot of the film starts when a government worker accidentally messes up an arrest form and gets the wrong man. The police break in and begin a ridiculous arrest scene; break all the windows, bust up the apartment above theirs and put a sack cloth over the man’s head - Mr. Buttle. Then Sam is shown as a very patient man who has to put up with his nervous and incompetent boss, Mr. Kurtzman (Ian Holm). Sam seems distracted because on his way to work he sees the woman of his dreams. She is a truck driver and rebel, Jill Layton (Kim Greist), who does not want anything with him.
Sam meets a renegade air-conditioner repairman, Harry Tuttle (Robert DeNiro), who was the man the Ministry was looking for at the beginning of the film and who quits the government because of too much paperwork. His interception of a phone call when Sam's air conditioning dies winds him in a lot of trouble with the Ministry of Works, represented by two weird repairmen.
Finally, Sam takes the big promotion his mother had set up for him, and in that way he can track down this Jill Layton easily. However, he finds himself with even more paperwork and in a tiny, claustrophobic office where he shares a desk with another man, Lime (co-writer Charles McKeown). His boss is quick-talking, Mr. Warren (Ian Richardson), who shows him his office, and yells at him for having a messy desk since all he's doing is becoming obsessed with Jill.
“The film is a plunge into the deepening insanity of a man who is having a war between his dreams and the reality of a burdensome world which is too efficient for its own good. Soon everyone has turned against him, including his best friend, Jack (Michael Palin). And by the end, he has won - he is totally numb and lives inside his mind, flying in the clouds with his dream girl and humming the cool latino song 'Brazil'”.
(Information taken from http://www.britmovie.co.uk/genres/fiction/filmography/003.html )
2 comments:
I stopped reading your review after the first three sentences. Your ignorance blew me away. First you start with saying the film must be somewhere in England. The title is Brazil. Then, you say the government is efficient and everyone is happy that things around them are convenient. That is the exact opposite of what is going on in the film. The whole point is that the government is inefficient and the tubes carrying papers everywhere are an extreme nuisance to the public. My god research before you blog!!!!!!!
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