Brazil

I want to love this movie. I want to say I see what has garnered it a following in the decades of its release. The set design and world-building is beyond impressive. Terry Gilliam seemingly had a blank check (or got very, very creative with how he spent what he had) to create a world unlike any other. It is similar to Orwell's 1984 in that towering monoliths and and imposing architecture are everywhere, but Gilliam's takes it a step further. Orwell's world was one of ruthless efficiency, and strength embodied through size. Oppression was almost a physical force. Brazil takes it the other direction; buildings are preposterously huge not to dominate the psyche, but to demonstrate the ludicrousness of it all. Everything is automated, but nothing works properly. HVAC systems for a one bedroom apartment have miles of tubing and wiring. Instead of the ruthless efficiency of Orwell, Brazil's world is dominated by incompetent bureaucracy. Everything is close to the edge of collapse, but it will never implode far enough to hurt the system, because the system has grown too big, too complex, and too obstinate to ever be toppled. Even everyday items we know, like computers, are given a re-design and made to look different enough to be new and weird. The script satirizing so many facets of our world. The mindless bureaucracy of government, where forms must be filled out to get forms, and even people on the inside don't know how things work. The cattle-like consumerism, where restaurants serve up what looks like colored cottage cheese and label it as steak or lamb chops and people eat it, a demonstration of how consumers can be conditioned to accept anything and be happy about it if done properly. A government that sees anyone who operates against the system, no matter how benign or inconsequential, as not just an antagonist, but a terrorist, and collateral damage is not only tolerated, but expected. An impenetrable system even for its operators, making them fight over resources, showing how the system is so out of whack, it actively fights progress even from the inside, even if it is broken. The direction, using wide angle lenses and shots, unusual angles, and scale models to translate Brazil's oppressive atmosphere. The movie has a wonderful visual language that underscores the atmosphere the set design is trying to create. I want to love this movie and not just respect it. But I can't. I was SO BORED. I was bored with this movie's go-nowhere, meandering series of sub-plots that never coalesced into an actual, fully-formed narrative. Why does the movie need the subplot about main character Sam's mom getting plastic surgery to look younger, while her friend gets plastic surgery from someone else with increasingly disastrous results? Why the sub-plot about the A/C repairmen coming back and turning a simple repair into a nightmare? Why the extended and repeated dream sequences that only contribute that Sam sees his dream girl before actually meeting her? Why have Sam's mom try to fix him up with her friend's daughter? And when Brazil isn't running down one of its cul-de-sac sub-plots, it's taking the long way around on one the sub-plots that DOES contribute something. And before someone says "well, what do you expect from a member of Monty Python?", I will counter that by saying that argument misunderstands Monty Python. What they did may have been anarchic and weird, but it wasn't formless. Gilliam himself has other movies that have form and a narrative through-line that can be identified; look at 12 Monkeys, for instance. Hell, even Monty Python & The Holy Grail, as random as that can be, manages to keep a steady beat throughout. Brazil seems to pull scene ideas out of a hat, tries to arrange some into a pattern, knows others don't belong, but stitches them all together anyway. It's like a quilt where some of the patches are denim, burlap, and leather. I never found Sam interesting. Unlike 1984's Winston, Sam isn't a man who is roused from his slumber and discovers a side of himself he didn't know was there. Sam is a nebbish with flights of fancy, but so is virtually everyone in his office; they all take turns watching old movies instead of working when the boss' back is turned. He isn't a revolutionary or counter-culture; he's just a middle-class dweeb who hates his life, but paradoxically resists any attempts to change it. I'll give Jonathan Pryce credit for the performance, as he is good, but the character is just bland. It's more than I can say for Kim Griest, who plays Sam's love interest Jill; I found her and the character grating and unappealing in every way. I don't know what made her Sam's dream girl, other than looks, because as a character, all she did was get on my nerves. Worse, on several occasions, she switched motivations, depending on what the situation needed, so there wasn't even consistency to her character. Everybody else ... they did their job. Michael Palin was fine, but he was also just being Michael Palin. Robert DeNiro stuck out in the worst way. And as much as the script satirizes a bunch of things, it also does so in the most broad, simple way. The satire is a puddle a mile wide and an inch deep. Oh, our reliance on technology is bad because technology fails! Bureaucracy is bad because breed more bureaucracy that nobody can penetrate! We're all mindless hamster consumers, happy to accept whatever we're given when we hit the feeder bar! Saying it and showing it the most exaggerated ways isn't satire; it's the bones of satire, but it isn't the whole thing. And that's on top of the fact that Brazil "satirizes" about a dozen other things about modern life, all with the same passing-glance attitude. It doesn't want to actually SAY anything about the things it is satirizing, just point them out and laugh. So, as much as I respect the world Gilliam created here, I can't enjoy it, because I don't like what little he did with it. He has said he never read 1984. It's not for me to say one way or the other if that's true, but one thing is true; Orwell knew that, for the satire and the horror to be effective, 1984's world had to feel real. It had to be close to the ground. The reader had to be looking up at the horror. Gilliam went the other way around and built a world from the top down ... but in doing so, lost sight of what populates the world and makes it feel real. The satire, the black comedy, the horror, is all too far away to be effective.