Brazil
Synopsis
Regarded as a cautionary tale equal to the works of Orwell and Huxley, this a nightmare vision of a dystopian future where technology reigns supreme and love is forbidden. A daydreaming bureaucrat becomes the tragic victim of his own romantic illusions.
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Awards & Festivals
Academy Awards
1986 | 2 nominations including: Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
It remains Gilliam’s most artistically successful film because it juggles the historical and the hallucinatory, the eternally true, the prophetically true, and that which is only ever true in his mind. It’s also the definitive film about how people live with excessive rules and regulations—meaning that it speaks equally clearly to Gilliam’s curmudgeonly persona, the eighties, the entire modern era, and, in 2017, the early days of the Trump presidency.
Jackson Arn
May 23, 2017
It’s a world where instability is constantly threatening to undermine the tightly wound internal logic that governs everything, where loose cogs in the machine like Sam Lowry become threats simply because the system isn’t wired to accommodate them… BRAZIL, among the most fantastically dark and detail-rich science fiction flicks ever, was—and remains—a visionary work worth fighting for.
Tristan Johnson
January 31, 2014
Tar-black in its comic tone, Brazil rouses a wide range of robust emotions through its stunningly coherent, madly inventive narrative. Sam and Jill’s romance is hard-won, delicate, and strangely sweet, their culminating roll in the hay radiating pure joy, but the filmmakers also tap potently into the ruthless irresponsibility that a privatized bureaucracy engenders.
Chris Cabin
December 06, 2012
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