#51: Brazil
Hi hi!
Firstly, I’m so sorry if you, like me, fell for Fake Fall again this year. I do it every year and my naive belief in its permanence only seems to get worse the older I get. But we’re close!!
Secondly, may I highly recommend The Poconos? Josh and I went last week and I don’t have any specific recommendations, just that you should go there, generally, because it’s beautiful.
#51: Brazil
Director: Terry Gilliam
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 1985
Runtime: 142 minutes
Language: English
**As always, this post contains spoilers**
CW: Violence
Do you remember the last Terry Gilliam movie I watched? I, for one, will never forget it. So, I was ready for this one and by that I mean, we split it up into two nights because I knew I simply could not handle 2+ hours of Gilliam’s psychedelic dystopian mind palace. Still could hardly handle it, for the record. I said it before the Time Bandits review and I’ll say it again here: hold on to your butts!
The movie begins “somewhere in the 20th century.” Think about that one. A window display of TVs showing commercials explodes. The TVs keep playing a news broadcast about a recent spate of terrorist bombings.
A man in a lab coat is printing arrest warrants, watching the news broadcast. A pesky little fly is buzzing around his head and after he kills it, it falls into the printing machine, causing a misprint. The name Archibald Tuttle is changed to Archibald Buttle. THIS IS IMPORTANT. I’m telling you because I wish someone would have told me.
The Buttle family (a mom, a dad, two kids) is at home also watching the news broadcast while the mom reads a Christmas story to the kids when a SWAT-like team with gas masks storms in through the ceiling, the windows, front doors, probably the walls, and fucks their whole thing UP. They read an arrest warrant for Mr. Buttle (Brian Miller). He’s been accused of being the terrorist bomber. They put him in a terrifying strait jacket and arrest him.
The whole ordeal is witnessed by their upstairs neighbor, Jill Layton (Kim Greist).
The next day in a bustling, weird, seemingly underground office, a Mr. Kurtzmann (Ian Holm AKA BILBO BAGGINS) discovers the typing error that caused Mr. Buttle to be arrested. He yells out for one of his workers, Sam Lowry.
Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce aka THE HIGH SPARROW from GOT) is not at work, but is currently flying through clouds with wings on and a very sexy skin tight suit of armor.
He kisses a blonde woman behind a veil. He’s dreaming, of course, and is woken by a call from his boss, Mr. Kurtzmann, demanding he come in. Sam gets up and gets ready for work in an apartment that is what the '80s thought the future would look like (aka AWFUL and VERY square).
Sam arrives at work in the Records Department, which is located in a massive building. In the lobby, the Buttle’s neighbor, Jill, wants to report the wrongful arrest of Mr. Buttle from the previous night. She gets held up by bureaucracy and is sent to another department.
Sam helps his boss, Kurtzmann, discover the warrant error wasn’t theirs and they’re relieved.
Mr. Buttle, not Mr. Tuttle, was charged (meaning $$$) for the arrest. Kurtzmann also tells Sam that he’s been promoted to Information Retrieval, but Kurtzmann bullies him out of it by saying he only got the promotion because Sam’s mom is a powerful lady in town and it would be pathetic for him to take the job, so he doesn’t.
That night, Sam visits his mom, Ida’s (Katherine Helmond) house. This lady. She is super rich, obsessed with cosmetic surgery and is currently receiving an outrageous face treatment from her surgeon and friend, Dr. Jaffe (Jim Broadbent).
She and Sam go out to a fancy dinner with her friend and her daughter. They each receive three scoops of what looks to be colored tuna salad with a picture of the intended meal. Can someone help me with this. WHY is future food always like this? Why in the future do they think people will just stop liking food and are dying for these weird Everlasting Gobstopper/Soylent solutions to hunger? PEOPLE WILL NEVER WANT THIS. Anyway, a section of the restaurant explodes (hopefully it was the kitchen) in a terrorist bombing and everyone at the table is totally chill.
Sam has another dream wherein the blonde woman is now in distress as huge columns shoot up out of the ground. He wakes up suuuupper sweaty because apparently his AC unit has gone berserk. He calls Central Services to help, but they say they can’t so he falls asleep with his head in the fridge. He’s woken up by a guy who looks like a burglar because, well, his face is covered and he’s holding a gun. But! It turns out it’s Archibald Tuttle (Robert De Niro), the terrorist suspect the government meant to arrest instead of Buttle. Turns out Tuttle used to work for Central Services and knows how to fix AC units. For reasons I can’t explain, the presence of Robert De Niro in this movie was so comforting to me.
As he’s fixing his AC, two guys actually from Central Services show up. Tuttle is freaked out, of course, because he’s obviously a wanted man, so he hides and Sam is able to get them to leave. Sam tells Tuttle that people in Information Retrieval are looking for an Archibald Tuttle and Tuttle tells him his name is Harry. The lie detector test determined that was a lie. He fixes Sam’s AC and escapes on a zip line.
The next day at work, Kurtzman shows Sam a refund check for Mr. Buttle since he was erroneously charged for the arrest that was intended for Tuttle. They can’t find Buttle anywhere in the system and it turns out he’s died but we don’t know why. They find his next of kin, his wife, and Sam is tasked with delivering the refund to her in person.
Sam drives a TINY car to Mrs. Buttle’s house, which is still a disaster from the raid. She’s super depressed, sitting in a chair, staring out the busted ass window.
She wants to know if her husband is really dead and what’s happened to his body, but Sam can’t answer any questions and just wants her signature. Mrs. Buttle flips out, her son attacks Sam, and her upstairs neighbor, Jill, asks from the ceiling hole if she’s alright and leaves. But Sam recognizes Jill as the woman from his dreams! So he chases after her. Jill, a truck driver, takes off in her big rig (remember Large Marge?) and Sam isn’t able to catch her. Also, his tiny car was destroyed by a bomb while he was gone. A little girl in the alley tells him Jill’s full name so now he can fully stalk her!
Back at work, Sam tries to look her up but can’t because he doesn’t have the security clearance. He realizes he could if he accepted the promotion to Information Retrieval, but it turns OUT that his boss, Kurtzmann, officially signed the form for him declining the promotion! I think Kurtzman is already corrupted by the Ring because he's on a real power TRIP. That’s a Bilbo Baggins joke.
Sam has a daydream on his way home about being a winged hero; in this one he has a sword!
Sam gets home and his house is a gd MESS of tubes and ducts. The two guys from Central Services are there again to “fix” his air conditioning system. Instead, they’ve destroyed it and have somehow discovered that Archibald Tuttle fixed the ducts, and they’re T’d OFF about it.
That night, Sam dreams he is fighting a giant warrior in a really pretty suit of armor that, when poked, is lit on fire. He wakes up in his apartment, wrapped up in ducts. A woman in a half-bellhop, half-burlesque costume runs in singing an invitation to his mother’s party that night. One THOUSAND percent this is the most believable part of this dystopian narrative: sing-a-grams still exist.
He arrives at the party and his mother has had a facelift and honestly looks great. At the party is Mr. Helpmann (Peter Vaughan), the Deputy Minister. Sam tells him he changed his mind and wants to accept the promotion. He allows it so now Sam can fully obsess about Jill.
He immediately goes to work where he’s shown to his office, which is, of course, awful. It’s all gray and tiny and dank and concrete and there’s ducts everywhere. He also shares half a desk through a hole in the wall with the office next to him. They play tug of war with it before Sam goes over and asks for his help accessing Jill's records on the computer.
Turns out, Jill has a warrant out for being an accomplice to Tuttle’s suspected bombing activities, probably because she’s giving everyone a hard time about Buttle’s wrongful arrest. Sounds about right.
Sam visits his friend, Jack Lint (Michael Palin), at work for more info about the Jill/Tuttle situation. He finds out Buttle died during his interrogation and they intend to arrest Jill next. Sam, wanting to save Jill from arrest, asks for her full file and says he’ll help track her down. Jack gives it to him.
As Sam is leaving the office, he sees Jill almost being arrested at gunpoint in the lobby. Sam is able to intervene, saying it's a classified matter. He drags Jill out of the building. She gets away in her truck but Sam is able to hop on. She stops in front of the building and asks him to get out of her truck because he touched her without her consent. He doesn’t because they’re being surrounded by cops, he threatens her with a fake gun in his pocket (his fingers), and she drives away.
Sam eventually bumbles out an apology and a confession that he’s been dreaming about her and that he loves her. She tells him he’s just her type and she’s very attracted to him and then opens his door and kicks him out and all of a sudden I love this movie?
He hangs on for dear life and she allows him back in the truck.
They're chased by government agents for awhile and it's very exciting! They arrive at a mall where there’s a terrorist bombing that takes out a bunch of old women. Jill and Sam survive, but the law shows up (did y’all grow up where they called cops “the law?” As in, “I’m gonna call the law on y’all?” I sure DID) and takes Sam into custody in a paddywagon. They drop him off at work where his boss yells at him for sucking at his job. He begs his friend Jack for info about Jill since they’ve been separated. Jack doesn’t tell him anything except, “When this all blows over, stay away from me” which is so mean and also I get it.
Sam goes home to find the two boobs from Central Services HVAC repair dressed in hazmat suits in his apartment. It is an actual icebox in there AND they’ve repossessed his apartment for some reason. As he’s leaving, he finds Tuttle (‘member our friend, DeNiro?) working on the pipes from the outside of the apartment. He reroutes the sewage pipes so they fill the guys’ hazmat suits with raw sewage until they explode and HOO BOY it’s gross and fun.
Jill shows up outside his apartment and they make out. I don’t totally get it but I also don’t care because this world they live in is hell and absolutely no one makes good decisions in hell.
They take refuge in Sam’s mom’s house, but Sam leaves abruptly, telling her he’s going to save her. His solution is to falsify records and “kill” her on paper so the government will stop pursuing her. He returns home, where Jill is in a see-through dress and long blonde wig, looking like she does in his dreams.
He tells her he’s “killed” her and she responds,—are you ready?—
“Care for a little necrophilia?” Again: we’re in hell, folks.
The next morning, their room is raided and they’re detained. I know it’s for the terrorism thing but I would also understand if it was for the necrophilia line.
Sam is put into a padded room with Mr. Helpmann, the Deputy Minister, who is horrifyingly dressed as Santa Claus.
Helpmann breaks the news that Jill was killed while resisting arrest. Sam is then taken into a HUGE room where he’s strapped down in a chair by two soldiers and told he should confess quickly (mostly to treason). He’s approached by a man in a fucked UP baby mask who turns out to be his old friend Jack. Jack is there to torture Sam!
Jack yells at him, “You stupid bastard, how could you do this to me?” which...having someone that mad at me would be torture enough. But before the torture begins, Jack is shot right in the head. A bunch of guys, including Tuttle, repel into the building to kill the other guards and free Sam. There’s a wild shoot-out between everyone but Sam and Tuttle escape. The building is destroyed and Tuttle is completely encapsulated by flying paperwork and Sam has to leave him behind. Sam runs until he stumbles upon the funeral of his mother’s friend who died from plastic surgery complications.
His mother is there, except now she looks exactly like Jill and by that I mean, she’s played by the actress who plays Jill. The government shows up again to detain Sam and he tips over the coffin. The contents spill out and I will not describe it to you because it's awful. He jumps into the casket which is a portal to a dank maze of monsters and ducts and tubing. He’s able to escape through a trap door but finds himself in the back of Jill’s truck. He makes his way to the front seat with her and they drive through a gorgeous landscape of mountains and greenery. The End.
JK
I’m so sad to tell you that this was all a dream and Sam is still trapped to the torture chair. Mr. Helpmann and Jack determine Sam has gone “insane” as he sits with a smirk, humming to himself. They leave him all alone in the chair.
THE END.
So there have been a lot of bummer endings in the CC, but this has to be up there as one of the worst so far. You survive a dystopian life only to be left alone, strapped to a torture chair, for possible ever. It doesn’t even seem like he has the ability to dream he’s that winged man anymore. WOOF. That’s the thing about dystopias, though. They’re full of fear and hopelessness, so it’s only fitting for a tale about one to stay true to that.
But what I find fascinating is that apparently there’s an alternate ending called the “love conquers all ending” that US distributors preferred to use because they felt the original ending was too dark and not audience-friendly. Which just reminds me that all of art is attempted manipulation and people are paying to feel good, which apparently can be made possible by showing them ~139 minutes of a dystopian hellscape that doesn’t NOT resemble their actual reality and then tacking on 4 minutes of a “happy/consumer-friendly ending” that negates the previous ~139 minutes of said dystopian hellscape, causing a belief that all is well/a surge of endorphins. And the truth is, it really is that easy! Think about all the little happy/consumer-friendly endings we plop into our days to make it all feel more tolerable, more possible to keep going.
Next up is some WELL-trodden territory that I am thrilled to trod through again and again: an Akira Kurosawa samurai film starring MY MAN Toshiro Mifune. It’s called Yojimbo. See you there?
XOXO,
Steph