Brazil

Brazil, from 1985, comes from the strange British mind of Terry Gilliam.  It follows, then, that this film did wonderfully in the UK, poorly in the US, and has since developed a cult following.

Jonathan Pryce, who is probably most easily recognized as Governor Swan in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, is Sam Lowry, a low level employee of the Ministry of Information in a fictional dystopian parody of Britain.  Despite being more intelligent than most of the bureaucrats around him, Sam is happy to stay at his position where he is mostly ignored and not responsible for the problems of higher departments.  His life is thrown into a maelstrom, however, when he investigates some inconsistent paperwork that led to the arrest and death of a Mr. A. Buttle instead of suspected terrorist A. Tuttle (Robert De Niro) due to an error caused by a fly getting caught in a typewriter.  In the process, he meets the mysterious girl (Kim Greist) who populates his frequent fantasy daydreams and finds himself becoming entangled in some very dangerous red tape as he ends up on the run from a bureaucracy that thinks he is associated with nondescript terrorists.

No one likes to make fun of bureaucracy like the Brits, and this - along with a message against consumerism - are central themes in the slapstick 1984esque world of Brazil.  From his incompetent boss Bilbo Mr. Kurtzmann (Ian Holm) who spends most of his time figuring out ways that his problems are someone else's problems, to Lowry's plastic surgery addicted mother (Katherine Helmond), the whole movie is a satire of society.  It's too bad that it makes so very little sense.

There is something that resembles a plot but it feels more like Gilliam's stream of consciousness.  On one hand, it makes this film very interesting to watch since it's like being inside a crazy person's imagination, but on the flip side, it is hard to comprehend.  I can appreciate Brazil for being highly imaginative and probably brilliant in ways that British citizens of 1985 and fans of Terry Gilliam will understand.  There are parts that are genuinely interesting and/or funny and it is fascinating to see how computers are portrayed by a film maker at a time when computers were still a very new and uncommon thing.

This is probably a good movie if you like such things, but for me it is mostly incomprehensible in a bad way, which puts a damper on my enjoyment.  Oh, and it has nothing to do with Brazil.

** (2/5 stars)