Brazil - Criterion

I was lucky enough to receive a wonderful DVD last month, and I have to recommend it. Terry Gilliam is one of the most gifted filmmakers on the planet, and he has carved a niche for himself as an artist of unassailable virtue in the David Lynch mold. His films are sometimes difficult, sometimes dense, always surreal, and always worth watching – his failures as well as his successes. Along with Lynch, Gilliam is the closest thing we have to a cinematic version of Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, David Foster Wallace, William Gass. Most Americans probably know his work on Monty Python best – but he has had the most creatively daring and innovative career of any former member of the celebrated British comedy troupe. Time Bandits, Jabberwocky, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are all, while certainly at times challenging, very ambitious and ultimately brilliant. Fear and Loathing was one of the rare cases where the movie was infinitely more enjoyable than the book . . . let’s face it, Hunter S. Thompson is knocking at the door, trying to get into Gilliam’s world but just doesn’t quite have the chops. It took Gilliam to distill and showcase what Thompson was getting at. It’s telling to look at the projects Gilliam has been associated with and fell through – presumably because of his rep as a hard headed artist type. He turned down directing the cult sci-fi classic Enemy Mine, was JK Rowling’s first choice to helm the Harry Potter movies (Gilliam was stoked, but the studio, predictably, scoffed), had an adaptation of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (could you imagine?) fall through and, most notably, Watchmen. Evidently, he was Alan Moore’s only choice. He had two treatments that got shot down, and the project was given to Zac Snyder. Zac Snyder of 300. I mean 300 was entertaining and all, but really? It’s like having McG direct Crime and Punishment. I am holding my breath, because it’s Watchmen. I don’t know if I’ve ever had such butterflies over a movie! But I can only imagine what a Gilliam vision of that world would look like.

So what did I get? Yeah, Gilliam fans already know I left out one movie – Brazil. The 3-disc Criterion Collection edition, with both versions of the movie and a plethora of extras, very impressive. It’s kismet, really, because just a few months ago the Blade Runner final cut was released, a 4-disc extravaganza, and IMHO these are the two best sci-fi movies ever made. Like Blade Runner, Brazil had all kinds of problems getting through the suits – both movies at some point had jarring, ridiculous happy endings demanded by studio execs convinced audiences wouldn’t “get” them (Blade Runner had it worse, being saddled with that hokey Phillip Marlowe VO). But whereas Blade Runner’s dystopia is distinctly American, dark and disturbing with no traces of irony or humor, Brazil is laugh out loud funny, gallows humor to be sure but the effect makes the final act and the ending, the true ending, very effective. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but Brazil is a fantasy. Our hero, Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce, toils at a Kafka-esque bureaucracy in an Orwellian world, daydreaming about being a superhero, rescuing damsels in distress and soaring over the clouds in a pristine, virgin world untouched by modern humanity. The death of imagination, which is a theme in all Gilliam’s movies, the futility we all feel railing at the monolithic, awkward, conformist nature of modern life, our attempts at trying to find some sort of individuality when individuality itself has become a commodity – and the only answer, the only escape, is fantasy – this is what the movie is illustrating. There are no villains in Brazil - only a suffocating, vast, impersonal social structure. It rings true 25 years after its conception.

Of course, this version of Brazil has been out for awhile. It has gained a cult following comparable to Blade Runner, and a dozen other sci-fi and art house movies. The highlight of the collector’s edition is the documentaries included with the movie. “What is Brazil?” chronicles the actual filming of the movie, with interviews with Gilliam, Jonathan Pryce and the rest of the cast and principal players (Robert DeNiro is conspicuously absent, but everyone involved with the film seems to be fascinated by him). It highlights the conflict between Gilliam and the writers, as well as the fog of war that seemed to afflict all the actors during the filming. The jewel of the extras is the Criterion produced doc, “The Battle of Brazil: A Video History,” which really delves into the studio battles involved in getting the film distributed in the US. The arrogance of the studio execs is staggering. Gilliam and co. were engaged in a wicked battle to deliver an “accessible” version of the movie – sans dream sequences and tortuous ending – ultimately resulting in a guerilla campaign to illegally show the original film to American critics in an attempt to leverage the studio to release an unsullied version. The studio wanted the tagline “Love Conquers All” to accompany the movie, which, to those who have seen the original, is hilarious. I like to think that we have grown as an audience – just this year we have seen No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood – but that is being a little naïve. The push and pull between art and commerce will always be with us, I suppose, and it is up to a small segment of critics, filmmakers and tastemakers to ensure we find out about the latest gem in the face of wall to wall Transformers commercials!

Go buy it! Or rent it, at least . . . Gilliam is working right now on something very close to my heart, a film adaptation of Good Omens, a novel by Neil Gaiman and Tracy Pratchett. I have a special place in my heart for this book – in 1992, when I was just a wee lad, at Comics Zone on Trop and Mountain Vista in Vegas, now closed, I met Neil Gaiman and he signed for me a copy of the hardcover Sandman collection "A Game of You" and a copy of Good Omens, both of which he personalized with drawings and encouragement for a young kid reading shit way over his head. I still have them, and I can’t wait for Gilliam’s interpretation.