#44 - Brazil (1985)

I came to the conclusion that cult classics are always hard to approach due to their basic nature. There has to be something very good about them that makes a reduced group of people cherish it so much, but there is almost always something that keeps it from achieving mainstream success. You can easily pinpoint both in Brazil; and just like in Donnie Darko. I loved the good bits a lot, but the bad ones kept me from giving it a very positive verdict.

The instant I started watching Brazil I was reminded of Blade Runner (has it been that long since I saw it?), you have a somewhat dystopian future with surreal images and similar visuals, like neon, bright colors contrasting against dark backgrounds. But instead of being a straight up futuristic film, Brazil feels more like how a man in the 40's might have imagined the 80's: it looks like a possible near future but other aspects look kind of old-fashioned at times. It looks like a retrofuturistic noir film, but the overall tone of the movie is completely different: it is overflowing wth dark humor, surreal images and exaggeration.

       

Some could say it is an incongruous mess: I say it works.

The story is just as intricate but it totally works. You have Johnathan Pryce as Sam Lowry, a government employee with little to no ambition, rejecting promotions and such. While trying to fix a bureaucratic mistake (that gets Archibald Buttle confused with Archibald Tuttle, a revolutionary leader, killed due to a typo) he comes across Jill Layton, a chick he has seen in his dreams, and motivated by his love/obsession is promoted to Information Retrieval, to find out more stuff about her. On the meanwhile, the real Tuttle (Robert de Niro) helps Lowry with some interfering workers that wreck his apartment. A lot more happens after (and during) that, but all the events are intertwined so well that you won't get mixed up.

And, aside from the unique visuals and complex narrative, I loved all the satiric undertones of this film. Again, it's a dystopian future where the world is ruled by bureaucrats, S.W.A.T. teams blow things up to take rebellious people away and typos can get you killed. What's not to like? Aside from that, Lowry's mom and her friends are great to watch, since they embody everything wrong with materialism and artificiality: all of them being obsessed with ridiculous plastic surgeries and eating food in the form of paste...

       

Ugh. Just ugh.

I really liked all that, but what about, you know, the "something that keeps it from achieving mainstream success"? All the surreal images. Lowry frequently dreams he is rescuing Jill from crazy, weird-looking monsters that look like something pulled out of a mediocre children-oriented fantasy film. It's so trippy and out of place, it sucks you out of the story and the setting. I also found the ending very unsatisfactory, it didn't wrap up a lot of loose ends and while it doesn't reach Donnie Darko proportions, it does get very weird. Plus, the social commentary bits sometimes get out of hand. Way out of hand.

Come on, death by paperwork? Did you seriously go there?

In the end, there is a lot to like if you are into this kind of dark, surreal parodies and retrofuturistic settings, but at times the "uniqueness" goes over the top and that can spoil the experience for a lot of viewers. It's not a film for everyone, and you are probably not missing out on a fantastic film if you decide not to watch it, but it's out there if you find the premise and my overall description interesting.