Details
Movie Description
BRAZIL is Terry Gilliam's masterpiece. Cowritten by Gilliam, playwright Tom Stoppard, and Charles McKeown, the cult-favorite film is set in a futuristic society laden with red tape and bureaucracy. When a bug (literally) gets in the system, an innocent man is killed, leading mild-mannered Sam Lowry (an excellent Jonathan Pryce) to reexamine what he wants out of life. He decides to fight the totalitarian system in his search for freedom--and the woman he loves. The terrific, offbeat cast features Robert De Niro as a renegade heating engineer; Katherine Helmond as Sam's ever-younger mother; Michael Palin as a government-sanctioned torturer with a distaste for upsetting the status quo; Bob Hoskins as a vengeful Central Services employee; Jim Broadbent as a wacko plastic surgeon; the wonderful Ian Holm as Sam's nerve-ridden, pitiful boss, afraid of his own signature; and Kim Greist as the rebel Sam falls for.
The look of BRAZIL is relentless, overwhelming, and outrageously spectacular. Giant monoliths rise from the street; government offices are a network of computers, pneumatic tubes, and narrow hallways built with Nazi-like precision; and apartment complexes are a maze of washed-out grays and numbers, all frighteningly uniform. The terrorist explosions actually bring color into this dull, monochramatic world. BRAZIL is a nightmare vision of the future, yet also hysterically funny and incisive, one of the most inventive, influential, and important films of the 1980s.
Synopsis
In this darkly comic view of the coming future, bureaucratic cog Sam Lowry dreams of escaping the totalitarian machine that society has become. He fantasizes about joining a beautiful woman flying through the clouds, far away from this world. One day he glimpses a female truck driver who resembles his fantasy and he attempts to win her love--but he ends up being dragged into the underworld of antigovernment terrorists and radicals. Terry Gilliam's vision, both expensive and expansive, resulted in a battle with studio executives over the lack of commercial potential of the darkly humorous, but often grim, material that was reedited for theatrical release without the director's approval.
Film Notes
DVD Features:
Region 1
Keep Case
Disc One:
Widescreen - 1.85
Single Side/Single Layer
Dolby Digital Surround - English
Additional Release Material:
Audio Commentary - Terry Gilliam - Director
Disc Two:
Widescreen - 1.85
Single Side/Single Layer
Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0
Additional Release Material:
Featurette - What is Brazil
Documentary - The Battle of Brazil: A Video History
Production Interview - Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown - Screenwriter(s)
Production Interview - Norman Garwood - Production Designer
Production Interview - James Acheson - Costume Designer
Production Interview - Michael Kamen - Composer
Behind the Scenes Footage
Original Theatrical Trailer
Text/Photo Galleries:
Storyboard
Stills/Photos - Publicity and Production Stills
Disc Three:
Widescreen - 1.85
Single Side/Single Layer
Dolby Digital Surround - English
Additional Release Material:
Audio Commentary - David Morgan - Journalist
Includes audio commentary by Terry Gilliam and theatrical trailer.
Released for one week in New York City and Los Angeles on December 18, 1985, to qualify for Academy Award nominations. Received a general release on February 14, 1986.
Filmed at Lee International Studios in Wembley, London's Dockland, a south London power station, a Kent oil refinery, and the Palais d'Abraxis apartment complex in Marne-La-Valee in Paris.
After the production could no longer afford to shoot in Lee International Studios, they filmed the fantasy sequences right behind the studio--ironically, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, a place, according to Gilliam, "where all the paperwork in Britain was stored."
Estimated budget: $15 million. Universal Pictures supplied $9 million of that budget but nearly shelved the project because of president Sidney Sheinberg's feeling that the film was too long and too depressing. When BRAZIL won the Los Angeles Critics Best Film Award anyway, Universal was forced to release it to the public.
The film's original running time of 142 minutes was cut to 131 minutes for its American release.
The title was taken from the 1930's Xavier Cugat hit "Aquarela do Brasil," written by Ary Barroso, which appears frequently in the film. Variety reported that director Terry Gilliam wanted to call the film 1984 1/2 instead of BRAZIL.
Named Best Film of 1985 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
According to the opening scene, the film begins at 8:49 a.m., "somewhere in the 20th century."
Among the Ministry of Information's sayings are Information: the key to prosperity; The truth shall make you free; Suspicion breeds confidence; Happiness: We're all in it together; Trust in haste--regret in leisure; Don't suspect a friend...report him; and Who can you trust?
Terry Gilliam worked for a man named Harvey Kurtzman when he was employed at a magazine in New York; Sam Lowry's boss in BRAZIL is named Kurtzmann.
Charles McKeown cowrote the script and appears in the film as Lime, which is quite possibly a referenc
The title was taken from the 1930's Xavier Cugat hit "Aquarela do Brasil," written by Ary Barroso, which appears frequently in the film. Variety reported that director Terry Gilliam wanted to call the film "1984 1/2" instead.
Named Best Film of 1985 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
Additional crew members: Tim Spence (special effects camera); Richard Conway (models supervisor); Graham Ford (production manager)
Estimated budget: $15 million. Universal Pictures supplied $9 million of that budget but nearly shelved the project due to president Sidney Sheinberg's feeling that the film was too long and too depressing. When BRAZIL won the Los Angeles Critics Best Film Award anyway, Universal was forced to release it to the public.
Released for one week in New York City and Los Angeles on December 18, 1985, to qualify for Academy Award nominations. Received a general release on February 14, 1986.
The film's original running time of 142 minutes was cut to 131 minutes for its American release.
The Voyager/Criterion version of the film (CC1348L) includes five laserdiscs: two discs for the film itself and three more discs that contain the following:
"Brazil, Ten Years After," a documentary by author Jack
Mathews
The 97 minute version of the film that Universal cut and
wanted to release
Production and publicity stills
Design drawings
Storyboards
An analysis of the musical score
Extra footage
Interviews with cast and crew
Industry Reviews
"...It's a knockout..."
Los Angeles Times - Michael Wilmington (06/10/1992)
"...It's rich in irony, steeped in surrealism and touched with genius....Easily one of the greatest movies of the '80s..."
Total Film - Dan Jolin (07/01/2003)
"...Hugely inventive..."
Sight and Sound - Geoffrey Macnab (08/01/2003)
Quotations
"Have a nice day. This has not been a recording."--Central Services phone operator to Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce)
"You can't make a move without a form."--Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro) to Sam
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