Brazil (DVD)

I’d always meant to watch Terry Gilliam’s much lauded movie Brazil. Often the byword for futuristic dystopia on film, I was only encouraged by the recommendations of two trusted friends (“cat” and “hat”, amusingly enough) and toddled over to play.com, where £10.99 and two days later it was mine. <drooooool> The plot of Brazil is frankly a side-issue to its metaphorical, blisteringly satirical tale of breaking from cerebral constraints and inhabiting a dreamworld, but hey, I’ll try my best. Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is everyman, content to remain cloistered in the job he is good at, living his life of routine and denying he even has dreams… ...  Read the complete review

“Brazil... Where hearts were entertaining June We stood beneath an amber moon And softly murmured someday soon...” So begins the song, ‘Brazil’, featured so unforgettably in the film of the same name. BRAZIL is one of those all too rare films that can truly be called essential viewing. They really should show it in schools. It is a work of such depth, scale, and utter brilliance that it loses nothing after seemingly unlimited viewings. In a strange quirk of fate, events surrounding the production and release of BRAZIL are almost as famous and startling as the film itself, and provide one of the most disturbing ...  Read the complete review

Just a fabulous film, despite it's rather depressing message that sees a monolithic, bureaucratic fascistic society triumphs over the free spirited individual, just like '1984'. Jonathan Pryce is a dreamer, a pen pusher in an amazingly complex and sinister government department who dreams (literally) of flying away from his tedious life. This is a society governed by bureaucracy, where the rebel terrorists are not freedom fighters, but plumbers who will fix your drains straightaway instead on at the end of an interminable wait, where psychotic torturers are boring family men (Michael Palin in a rare role as a villain), and where one dead fly ...  Read the complete review

After seeing a surrealist film one might be tempted to write a surrealist review, but this critic must remember her own critics who are waiting to condemn such pretentiousness with a loud "NU". So let's be careful. But a surrealist review could make an excuse that with some films it isn't possible to write about the plot without also exploring the deeper aspects and the overall psychology, since one feeds back into the other. One might be reminded of it during one moment where the main character in this film connects an incoming pipe across to an outgoing pipe in his office, and sends message containers on a circular journey. When the question becomes the ...  Read the complete review

Brazil is one of the greatest films ever made in my opinion, looking at the life of a little adminstatrative clerk called Sam Lowry who lives in a dark brooding society. Society is a dark one, everything is controlled and peoples lives are dictated by the decisions of the government. This is a Orwellian world in which the government is all controlling, Sam is a man in his thirties played by the brilliant Jonathan Price, he's tall, not particularly good looking, intelligent and totally happy in his life. This is a Terry Gilliam film and is shot in dark pervading imagery. However, Sam is turned by a girl, she fascinates him and he finds her before ...  Read the complete review