Brazil (1985)

“A ferociously creative 1985 black comedy filled with wild tonal contrasts, swarming details, and unfettered visual invention — every shot carries a charge of surprise and delight.” — Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“It’s like a stoned, slapstick 1984: a nightmare comedy in which the comedy is just an aspect of the nightmarishness…visually, it’s an original, bravura piece of moviemaking, with a weirdly ingenious vertical quality: the camera always seems to be moving up and down, rarely across.” — Pauline Kael

SYNOPSIS

Terry Gilliam pits the liberating possibilities of human imagination against the soul-crushing machinery of modern bureaucracy in this feverishly inventive dystopian nightmare. Jonathan Pryce stars as Sam Lowry, a lowly government functionary whose regimented existence is upended by a clerical error and his obsession with a mysterious woman who resembles the figure haunting his dreams. Set against a perversely festive Christmas backdrop of extravagant consumerism and compulsory cheer, Brazil unfolds in a grotesque retro-futuristic universe of cavernous offices, malfunctioning technology, labyrinthine paperwork, and towering industrial architecture. Combining the anarchic absurdism of Monty Python with the paranoid sensibilities of Kafka and the surrealist imagination of Dalí, Gilliam pushes his visual extravagance toward increasingly sinister ends as Sam’s fantasies of heroic escape collide with an all-powerful administrative state. Alternately hilarious, horrifying, and heartbreaking, Brazil is a staggering achievement of cinematic world-building and one of the most audaciously imaginative films of the 1980s.

Brazil is presented in a newly-minted and gorgeous 4K restoration, conducted by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with Universal Pictures and supervised by director Terry Gilliam. It screens as part of our limited series, Not So Merry and Bright, spotlighting a handful of not-so-festive holiday classics from the alternative Christmas movie canon.