TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

austin0731 Brazil is inventive, interesting and ahead of its time. Brazil is such a compelling and fresh story even now, 20+ years after its release. In fact in our world today we should pay so much more attention as the world of Brazil is slowly becoming a reality. With a central bureaucratic government focused on paperworks, rules and regulations the reality escaping Sam Lowry truly is a reflection of all of us. First, I must commend the many brilliant performances in Brazil, of course Jonathan Pryce was very good in his role as Sam Lowry. Robert De Niro was solid in the brief moments that he was on screen and Kim Griest was also really great as Jill Layton playing a brilliant foil to Sam Lowry.Brazil tells such a brilliant story of the protagonist: Sam Lowry and his sense of wonder and imagination a dream of a better world than the technology ridden, grey concrete reality. The film captures the sense of concrete confinement perfectly, the architecture of the world was dull and grey, the office rooms were confined and tight. All the while we see these pipelines running within the walls as the film creates a Orwellian world.This movie captures the idea of the everyday struggle of the everyman perfectly and in a way that is fully relatable. Sam Lowry's character is constantly stuck in this irritating cycle of paperwork and needlessly convoluted central government. This to me is very much a daily struggle for people even now. Just think about the mountains of paperwork you need to fill for the many day to day affairs when really this is simply inefficient. Brazil takes this idea a brings it to a whole new level. Brazil also discusses dreams and the idea that only through our imagination are we free and not to be confined by such an overpowering bureaucracy. Magnificently materialized in a shot near the end of the movie where Sam Lowry is in a room towed away by Jill Layton and there were no wires or pipe work buried in the walls. A brilliant shot utilizing symbolism in the most amazing ways. Brazil is truly a thought provoking movie that is sure to be thought provoking and just has so many interpretations. It is such a beautiful and great film that absolutely exceeds its time.

Asif Khan (asifahsankhan) In the wake of 1984 and with the work of Kafka in mind, the former Monty Pyton Terry Gilliam realises a load of movie Hume black and surprising in dramatic structure as in that view. Rich in Cinefile quotations but above all to find very successful comic and pungent satirical ideas, Brazil is a complex and original, sometimes confused but often brilliant. The ability to Gilliam to build the stage space and resume it as efficiently as possible is still unsurpassed, and his idea was to present the film as a work of the early sixties psychedelic culture is what allows the film to have the charm that has, to the boundless imagination of its director. But it is also what convinced the executives at Universal to keep it long in the drawer, then distributing it in the cut version in the United States.The hero of "Brazil" is Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a meek, desperate little man who works at a computer terminal all day. Occasionally he cheats; when the boss isn't looking, he and his fellow workers switch the screens of their computers to reruns of exciting old TV programs. Sam knows his life is drab and lockstep, but he sees no way out of it. His only escape is into his fantasies - into glorious dreams of flying high above all the petty cares of the world, urged on by the vision of a beautiful woman.His everyday life offers no such possibilities. Even the basic mechanisms of life support seem to be failing, and one scene early in the movie has Robert De Niro in a walk-on as an illegal free- lance repairman who defies the state by fixing things. De Niro makes his escape by sliding down long cables to freedom, like Spider-Man. For Sam, there seems to be no escape. The scene of Brazil, Jonathan Pryce offers what is probably the best performance of his career and Robert De Niro is little more than a cameo, however managing to draw their own character as the only true hero of the film, much more important than the dream Sam.All of this is strangely familiar; the outlines of "Brazil" are much the same as those of 1984, but the approach is different.Just as George Orwell's 1984 is an alternate vision of the past, present and future, so "Brazil" is a variation of Orwell's novel. The movie happens in a time and place that seem vaguely like our own, but with different graphics, hardware and politics. Society is controlled by a monolithic organisation, and citizens lead a life of paranoia and control. Thought police are likely to come crashing through the ceiling and start bashing dissenters. Life is mean and grim.Nominated for an Oscar for Original Screenplay (Gilliam, Tom Stoppard and Charles McKeown) and set design (Norman Garwood), as well as music, sound and song.Steven Soderbergh used the name of the protagonist of this film, Sam Lowry, as a pseudonym of his work as a screenwriter for Schizopolis , the film narrative experimental-ism Brazil should certainly something.

ElMaruecan82 "Brazil" has the title, the music and the creativity upon which masterpieces are made on, but it's like an irrepressible and suffocating twirling mass of the same paperwork that poison people's lives have taken over the plot, and it's only within its core that you can understand why this is such a great movie. But a better editing would have befitted such an ambitious plot, a pity Gilliam; the artist triumphed over the director. This is an artsy film with no direction.The last Gilliam film I watched was "The Fisher King" and it suffered the same syndrome. I enjoyed it but the story was never as brilliant and soul-penetrating as in the quieter and more realistic parts. It could have done without the Red Dragon hallucinations and even that Holy Grail subplot. But what Gilliams' movies say about him is that he has a sort of childlike obsession with "conflict" as something that can only be exposed through some big-scale extravaganza fights with high-tech effects and so forth, and that's exactly what almost ruined my enjoyment of "Brazil". The film is like a big party you're invited to, you enjoy yourself, you have fun, but because of two or three incidents, you're not sure you want to live the same experience again. Now, there's no doubt that the film is brilliant and it's a great satire against the overwhelming effect of bureaucracy and even technology (although it is displayed in a retro-futuristic way), we are all literate enough to get all the Orwellian vibes from the film, and even now, I can't imagine the hell of bureaucracy without that Brazilian tempo working in my mind. So, no one who criticized "Brazil" missed the point. But it's like Gilliam wants so much to emphasize the feeling of sheer confusion induced by the whole (mis)adventure that instead of making the story confusing by maintaining a solid plinth to the narrative, he made the experience of following the film, confusing as well. At one moment, you see Sam trying to find a woman, which in the actual setting is Herculean enough a task, and another moment, he's a warrior fighting a giant Samurai. I love some artistic licenses, but talk about overkill. Gilliam had a good story at hands but he goes for sensationalism while he had enough material to design something thrilling in the content, without going for such hyperbolic action sequences. The result is uneven and infuriating. When you trust your material, you don't need some pseudo psychedelic fights, chase sequences or other wall-crashing moments, action isn't always to be treated literally. Yes, this is a world that takes some monster Godzilla-like size, but I don't care that Gilliam wanted to pay homage to Kurosawa with the Samurai-figure, just make a tribute to "Ikiru" which was a real movie about bureaucracy, and it'll be fine. The same goes with the Brazilian escapist moments, first it's poetic and dreamlike, but they are so redundant that you don't know which story you're supposed to follow in the end. It says a lot about Gilliam and his tendency to make polarizing movies when they're no need for it. Indeed, we need a story, you can't make the cleverest satire without trying to confuse the audience but, it's like some suicidal impulse that is somewhat more fascinating than the film's content. I tried to watch "Brazil" twice, the first time, I fell asleep, the second, I turned it off because I was tired of trying to figure out what point he wanted to make with this or that scene. Now. I finally made it till the end, and while I acknowledge that there was some potential in this film and some scenes are nothing short but masterpieces: the Metropolis-like shots, any scene with Katharine Helmond and Ian Holm, and some brilliant little touches like the duct on the dog's poo-hole, this is still one of the cases where the final cut should've been shorter. The element that is constantly praised by the fans is the critics against bureaucracy, well, that makes the whole fights and chases quite useless, and what about the heart of the story: Sam? Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce, was a great character, the perfect straight man to this tragicomedy. Why not making him someone who really wants to go to Brazil? Why not creating some deeper connection with the woman, not just "curiosity"? How about the Harry Tuttle guy? The film had plenty of directions to take, but it just makes his main protagonist wander in a dystopian universe, encountering the most eccentric characters, and punctuate the film with a few actions sequences and weird nightmarish intrusions.I love the way Siskel described the movie: "It beautifully beats to death one point" He nails it. This is the film the expressions "insisting upon itself" was invented for, and even the whole bureaucracy thing is a bit overrated. I don't know if this review will be useful for anyone, but if I want a great and short satire about bureaucracy, I watch "The Place That Sends You Mad" segment from "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix". Now, that's perhaps the best critic against bureaucracy ever made, and it didn't need any special effects or fight sequences.As for "Brazil", Gilliam is one hell of a director and writer, but you know, there's a reason why they also give Oscars for "editing". As I said for another Gilliam's film, it's like the directing's style stealing the story's thunder.

Kirpianuscus a complex , delicate machine more than a film. themes, high performances, dark humor, provocative, profound meditation about dictatorship, freedom and resistance to social uniformity. Kafka and Borges and Orwell. under the art of the unique Terry Gilliam. it is difficult to define Brazil because today it seems be almost prediction. the fears of our time are present in this not comfortable dark Utopia in a manner who creates many surprises. and revelation. but this fact becomes, decade by decade, one of the virtues of film. because it proofs the force of fiction to impose it as reality of every day. because it is not an eccentric show but a map of adaptation. or a warning. because the genius of Terry Gilliam, after an impressive career, has in Brazil a key of translation for symbols, themes, images.