DVD : Brazil
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780783225906
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0783225903
Label: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Universal Studios
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 31, 1998
Running Time: 132 minutes
Sales Rank: 2847
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: December 18, 1985
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video:
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen, one Mr. Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled as a miscreant.
The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously screened his cut for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who named it the best movie of 1985 and virtually embarrassed Universal into releasing it. This DVD version of Brazil is the special director's cut that first appeared in Criterion's comprehensive (and expensive) six-disc laser package in 1996. Although the DVD (at a fraction of the price) doesn't include that set's many extras, it's still a bargain. --Jim Emerson
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I typically like the more abstract and intellectually masturbatory films of this nature and I'm rather fond of dark satire so this should be a huge winner for me. I'm afraid it wasn't.
Certainly there were some very cool elements technologically, I rather enjoyed the somewhat steampunk design of what the world might look like now if everything had gone a different direction.
That's really where my enjoyment ended, I think the narrative was too scattered and I never felt emotionally invested in the characters. As a story had interesting concepts but I think they were all done better and more appropriately a work like 1984 and the characters actions and emotions were so absurd that I wasn't sure I ever believed they were real.
Our poor star of the movie becomes obsessed with a women in his very strange dream but who he never appears to have any real relationship and he sacrifices seemingly everything to find her and protect her from a threat that seemed mostly within his mind. The women, initially rejecting him in question of his sanity suddenly has a change of heart and falls for him, or seems to as we fall further into the illusions and insanity of our hero's mind.
In the end I feel like this film is worth watching in the interest of film history and the art design is very nice but the movie is too absurd when it isn't plain boring and won't sit very high on my list of great movies.
Rating:  -
Terry Gilliam's unique satire is as funny as it is absurd and dark. With the character of Sam Lowry he created the perfect anti-hero, not in the least thanks to the brilliant performance by Jonathan Pryce.
Equally well known is the conflict that Gilliam had to enter into to get his movie released as he wanted it, because the studio heads suddenly got not only cold feet but also the crazy notion to have a happy ending and drastically make cuts in the movie to make it shorter. Gilliam took the right approach, organized a film critics screening who raved about it and thus embarrassed the studio execs. The result was two versions of the movie, the studio version without dream sequences but with happy ending to be shown in the US and a European version of the movie Gilliam had actually made.
It's true Gilliam's original ending won't let leave the cinema cheerful, but it's so strong and really the logical consequence of what preceded it, that changing it is an indefensible assault on the movie, that would severely immaculate it.
The title of the movie has little to do with the country, but refers to the song of that name, which can be heard every time Sam Lowry has one of his day dreams in which he is a super hero fighting a monstrous giant opponent, naturally to save a damsel in distress. He is utterly surprised when he meets this 'woman of his dreams' in real life, even if she has shorter and doesn't exactly fall for him right away. This is not ... Read More
Rating: -
I saw most of this movie years ago, and I just tried to watch it entire to see the first part I missed. Quit half-way through.
This movie has fantastic art direction, and is filled with small bits of good comedy, but it basically has one or two jokes told over and over again: jibes at the petty status-seeking of bureacratic society; satire of technological utopianism, as shown by the constantly screwing up duct systems, robots, anachronistic typing machines, etc.
The story is a simple and tiresome one about a poor guy who dreams of a girl, both from the opposite sides of the bureacratic tracks, etc...The "romantic" aspect is hackneyed, and of course, it's way too long.
Better to read 1984, Zamayatin's We, Brave New World than to watch this film. They're more clever, more disturbing, and more funny.
Rating: -
This is a masterpiece of a movie, one that a director can only accomplish once in a lifetime, and has to be watched without distraction. For young viewers who got used to today's nausea inducing camera shots and ultra quick half second edits, the pacing could come off as ponderous at first. One one level, it's a beautiful and even by today's computerized standards awesome cinematic masterpiece, one that's done without any 3D graphics at all, and even trying to imagine some of the scenes being constructed without the help of any computer graphics is simply staggering. On the other, it's a razor edged satire targeted at bureocracy and pettiness in our society. It's so obvious that this movie has been lovingly put together bit by bit with incredible attention to detail by whomever took part in it, from the costume designers to background painters, and only a director like Terry Gilliam could bring it all together without going insane with all that detail. Music is top notch, too.
Rating: -
There aren't too many movies like "Brazil" around. It's been assigned to the category "steampunk" but I'm not sure that is correct- it has some cyberpunk attributes as well. Anyway, the labels aren't too important. What matters is the clever 3-way mix of human story, technology fantasy/satire, and sharp cynicism about the future of society.
Imagine a version of "1984" where everything is pretty much governed by the "information Ministry." But rather than being a horrifyingly efficient organ of the State, it is more of a bureaucratic nightmare with masses of "organization men" shuffling huge amounts of paper and aided - or hindered - by a computer technology that uses old Remington typewriter keyboards and small screens that have a magnifying lens in front of them! Televisions are the old 1950's style rounded-edge screens. HVAC systems are a jumble of huge hoses that breathe stertorously as they supply the air. A truck is a large cumbersome vehicle with far too many bits and pieces all over it, huge tires, and a general "Mad Max" look.
The film tracks the path of a guileless minor cog in this over-organized but inefficient society. He doesn't want to participate in any of the internal status struggles, just to stay where he is, doing meaningless work and fantasizing/dreaming of a life as a winged superhero soaring through the clouds to meet a beautiful woman...and great is his amazement when in real life he sees the same enchanting face! His life is never ... Read More
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starring: Jim Broadbent, Ray Cooper (II), Robert De Niro, John Flanagan, Kim Greist
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780783225906
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0783225903
Label: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Universal Studios
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 31, 1998
Running Time: 132 minutes
Sales Rank: 2847
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: December 18, 1985
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