BRAZIL
m.r.leeper
BRAZIL
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This is the best science fiction film
of 1985. But catch this story of an Orwellian future quickly
--it won't be around for long.
1984 never came. At least, not the way that George Orwell pictured it
in 1984. The book was his prediction from the viewing point of 1948 of what
the next 36 years could bring. It is a moot point how accurate his
prediction was, but the book is still a valuable yardstick for measuring our
current world. It has been a valuable yardstick for years. BRAZIL is a new
film. It does not have the track record of having been useful for years.
However, it also seems to be a prediction from the viewpoint of 1948 of how
the world could have turned out and today it is no less valuable than 1984
as a yardstick for measuring today's society.
In the world of BRAZIL technology has stagnated. The lords of creation
are a megalithic bureaucracy and, apparently, the people who make heating
ducts. All the technology in the world is refinements of inventions that
were around at the end of World War II. (One exception, I think, is the
Fresnel lens, but for society to have changed so much and for only one
invention to come along is a rather telling indictment of this political
system.) This is a paper-bound society in which the path to getting the
smallest thing done has the form in a triangle. The greatest public enemy
is a man who does repairs without red tape.
In this world one minor official, one Sam Lowry, has abstract dreams of
escaping the dingy crush of government world and flying free with his ideal
woman. These fantasies have sapped Lowry's will to get ahead at the dismal
Ministry of Information. When he finds that the woman he has been dreaming
of really exists, he starts fighting the mournful inertia of the society to
try to find her.
Terry Gilliam seems to have for some time wanted to do in live action
the sort of things he did in animation for MONTY PYTHON. He nearly
succeeded in TIME BANDITS, but the script of that film was extremely uneven.
This time he co-authored the script with Tom Stoppard, considered to be one
of the greatest living playwrights. And the choice of Stoppard paid off.
For the first time in his career, Gilliam was not just making people laugh,
he was telling a story of substance. Instead of just joking about the
meaning of life, Gilliam is now actually saying something about it.
Jonathan Pryce, who oozed malevolence in SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY
COMES, carries the film as San Lowry. Also on hand are familiar faces like
Robert De Niro, Ian Holm, Katherine Helmond, and Michael Palin. This film
gets a +2 for pleasure, but on the -4 to +4 scale it can get nothing less
than a +3 for artistic achievement. This was the best science fiction film
of 1985. A recent FILM COMMENT takes Universal to task for releasing STICK,
JAMES JOYCE'S WOMEN, CREATOR, MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE, DREAM CHILD, WILD
GEESE II, and HOLOCAUST COVENANT in 1985, while deciding BRAZIL was
unreleasable. Universal is absolutely right. A film this good probably
will not attract enough of the teenage audience to make it profitable. It
will play at your local art theater a week and then disappear, like SMILE or
STUNT MAN. And just like these films, people will be rediscovering BRAZIL
for years to come.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
What's all this, then?
>
> BRAZIL
> A film review by Mark R. Leeper
>
> Capsule review: This is the best science fiction film
> of 1985. But catch this story of an Orwellian future quickly
> --it won't be around for long.
>
>art theater a week and then disappear...
Well, I hope you're wrong!!! I agree with everything you said. But here in
San Diego and in Los Angeles, _Brazil_ has been playing for over a month. When
I saw it, there was only about 25-30 people in attendance, and most of them
didn't seem to enjoy it.
But as in the case with real art, the masses can not appreciate talent! 8{)
My recommendation: If y'all liked films/movies like Videodrome, Liquid Sky,
and Teenage Coed in Heat, 8{) you'll enjoy Brazil.
Go see it, while you can!!!
-Film critic in hiding,
Cary DiWhay
Mark Callow
> BRAZIL
> A film review by Mark R. Leeper
>
> ducts. All the technology in the world is refinements of inventions that
> were around at the end of World War II. (One exception, I think, is the
> Fresnel lens, but for society to have changed so much and for only one
> invention to come along is a rather telling indictment of this political
> system.)
Umm -- the fresnel lens was invented by a Frenchman named (surprise surprise)
Fresnel, some time in the 19th century (it may have been even earlier). He
designed it for use in lighthouses.
I know, I know this isn't relevant to net.movies. Let's see...Ah ha, here's
a tie-in. Any movie ever made with artificial lighting has used lamps fitted
with fresnel lenses.
--
From the TARDIS of Mark Callow
m...@saber.uucp, sun!saber!m...@decwrl.dec.com ...{ihnp4,sun}!saber!msc
"Boards are long and hard and made of wood"
Charley Wingate
> [Brazil] was the best science fiction film
>of 1985. A recent FILM COMMENT takes Universal to task for releasing STICK,
>JAMES JOYCE'S WOMEN, CREATOR, MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE, DREAM CHILD, WILD
>GEESE II, and HOLOCAUST COVENANT in 1985, while deciding BRAZIL was
>unreleasable. Universal is absolutely right. A film this good probably
>will not attract enough of the teenage audience to make it profitable. It
>will play at your local art theater a week and then disappear, like SMILE or
>STUNT MAN. And just like these films, people will be rediscovering BRAZIL
>for years to come.
In fact Mark's prediction has proven quite wrong, at least in this area.
Brazil has been playing for over a month now in general release here, and
shows no signs of disappearing anytime soon. In contrast, CREATOR and
MORONS didn't last but a few weeks (MORONS died in a week), and I never even
saw an ad for any of the others listed (except DREAMCHILD, which if I
remeber correctly has only shown up recently). Mark seems to forget that
teenagers all over America tune into video shows and MTV all the time, where
they show things as weird and grotesque as one cares to imagine.
Of course, maybe this says something about Washingtonians....
C G W
Charlie Martin
A tiny and minor correction: Augustin Jean Fresnel died in 1827,
and invented his lens somewhat before that. It was just hard
to make one until they could press one in plastic.
--
Charlie Martin
(...mcnc!duke!crm)
Norman Ramsey
>were around at the end of World War II. (One exception, I think, is the
>Fresnel lens, but for society to have changed so much and for only one
>invention to come along is a rather telling indictment of this political
>system.) This is a paper-bound society in which the path to getting the
Actually, the Fresnel lens was invented by Augustin(?) Fresnel in the
nineteenth century, when he started working for the government on the
problems of optics in lighthouses. He was one of the few nineteenth-century
students of optics whose work can still be read as physics today (the other
one perhaps being Thomas Young). He is probably most famous for his theory
of diffraction, which stunned the scientific world by predicting (correctly)
the appearance of a bright spot in the center of a shadow cast by a circular
disk.
Of course, this has nothing to do with sf-lovers, except to point out that
there were NO technological innovations since WWII. Besides, I thought you
might like to know.
--
Norman Ramsey nor...@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu Pianist at Large
Steve Dunn
> JAMES JOYCE'S WOMEN, CREATOR, MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE, DREAM CHILD, WILD
> GEESE II, and HOLOCAUST COVENANT in 1985, while deciding BRAZIL was
> unreleasable. Universal is absolutely right. A film this good probably
> will not attract enough of the teenage audience to make it profitable. It
> will play at your local art theater a week and then disappear, like SMILE or
> STUNT MAN. And just like these films, people will be rediscovering BRAZIL
> for years to come.
>
>
> Mark R. Leeper
> ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
Uh, Well Clem, out here in Boulder Colorado its been playing for nigh on
a month and not at no high falutin' art theater either. Been at th'
Commonweath theaters raht thar in th' shoppin' mall. Purty durn good
crowd when I went to see it too.
-Steve "Shop K_MART, enjoy life!" Dunn
m.r.leeper
realized. I should have thought that it was used in lighthouses for
many years. I was thinking of Fresnel lenses as being only the plastic
ones we started seeing in overhead projectors in the 60's. Thanks for
all who corrected me in e-mail and on the net. I guess my point that
the society in BRAZIL had stagnated is made even stronger by this.
Mark Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
Mark Wutka
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.
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,masscomp,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!wutka
...!{rlgvax,sb1,uf-cgrl,unmvax,ut-sally}!gatech!gitpyr!wutka
Official member of NERDS (NERDS Existing in a Recursively Defined System)
Greg Taylor
>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
>stairs firing at the revolting crowd...
The bit with the vacuum cleaner bumping down the stairs unattended
(cf the baby carriage shot from Eisenstein) was so blatant a quote
that even the preppie gropefest in the seats in front of us untangled
long enough to remark (in not so dulcet a tone) on it. Of course,
they called him "sergie einstein".....
Steven Grady
>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.
Something which I hadn't thought of, but which seemed obvious after
Gillim mentioned it after a showing here at which he spoke, was that
the idea was that, as it says in the beginning, the movie is set "somewhere
in the 20th century" (was that the quote?). Thus there is a potpourri
of technology from every time, and the movie is not supposed to be
set at any one era. There is 50's type technology (manual typewriters,
vacuum tubes, air tubes) along with 80's (crt's everywhere, etc).
There is clothing and decor from the 40's and 50's, etc. etc.
I felt like an idiot when I realized I hadn't noticed what he meant,
but it appears that many people haven't realized it either.
Steven
ucbvax!grady
Wayne Citrin
>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 ?
It's a closer parody than that. The shots of the cleaning woman with the
bullet through her glasses and eye, and the vacuum cleaner rolling down
the stairs, parallels a very similar scene in "Potemkin" involving a
baby carriage.
Wayne Citrin
(ucbvax!citrin)
Clayton Cramer
Those of you who saw the most recent (and best) remake of _1984_
will recall that all the devices in that film are minor innovations
on 1940s technology -- the use of pneumatic tubes, for example. It's
tempting to see this as the art director's attempt to portray the world
of _1984_ in terms that Orwell would be familiar with, but in fact, if
you read the book, you will recall that he makes the point that the
system stifles innovation and creativity, and that the only real
improvements in technology are the implements of war. Advances in the
sciences have to be connected to implements of war, or they were
discouraged by the repressive atmosphere.