Friday Flix, March 30

Here is the info Your Humble Blogger received regarding tomorrow's screening of 'Brazil.'

SCREENING FRIDAY, MARCH 30, AT FRIDAY FLIX!
12:30 p.m., San Gabriel 334

"BRAZIL" (1985)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Starring Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Katherine Helmond, Robert DeNiro, Michael Palin
Also with Bob Hoskins and Ian Holm
Running time: 143 min.


Brazil is a 1985 British science fiction fantasy/black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam. It was written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard and stars Jonathan Pryce. The film also features Robert DeNiro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm. John Scalzi's Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies describes the film as a "dystopian satire".

The film centres on Sam Lowry, a man trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living a life in a small apartment, set in a dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines. Brazil's bureaucratic, totalitarian government is reminiscent of the government depicted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four except that it has a buffoonish, slapstick quality and lacks a Big Brother figure.

Jack Mathews, film critic and author of The Battle of Brazil (1987), described the film as "satirizing the bureaucratic, largely dysfunctional industrial world that had been driving Gilliam crazy all his life". Though a success in Europe, the film was unsuccessful in its initial North America release. It has since become a cult film.

The film is named after the recurrent theme song, "Aquarela Do Brasil".

Gilliam sometimes refers to this film as the second in his "Trilogy of Imagination" films, starting with Time Bandits (1981) and ending with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989). All are about the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible." All three movies focus on these struggles and attempts to escape them through imagination—Time Bandits, through the eyes of a child, Brazil, through the eyes of a man in his thirties, and Munchausen, through the eyes of an elderly man.

Gilliam has stated that Brazil was inspired by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four—which he has admitted never having read—but is written from a contemporary perspective rather than looking to the future as Orwell did. In Gilliam's words, his film was "the Nineteen Eighty-Four for 1984." Critics and analysts have pointed out many similarities and differences between the two, an example being that contrary to Winston Smith, Sam Lowry's spirit did not capitulate as he sunk into complete catatonia.

Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan described Brazil as "the most potent piece of satiric political cinema since Dr. Strangelove". Janet Maslin of The New York Times was very positive towards the film upon its release, stating "Terry Gilliam's Brazil, a jaunty, wittily observed vision of an extremely bleak future, is a superb example of the power of comedy to underscore serious ideas, even solemn ones."

In 2004, Total Film named Brazil the 20th greatest British movie of all time. In 2005, Time film reviewers Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel named Brazil in an unordered list of the 100 best films of all time. In 2006, Channel 4 voted Brazil one of the "50 Films to See Before You Die", shortly before its broadcast on FilmFour. The film also ranks at number 83 in Empire magazines list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.

Wired ranked Brazil number 5 in its list of the top 20 sci-fi movies. Entertainment Weekly listed Brazil as the sixth best science-fiction piece of media released since 1982. The magazine also ranked the film #13 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films".

Brazil was nominated for two Academy Awards; for Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction (Norman Garwood, Maggie Gray) According to Gilliam in an interview with Clive James in his online programme Talking in the Library, to his surprise Brazil is apparently a favorite film of the far Right in America.


DISCUSSION TO FOLLOW

ALL STUDENTS, FACULTY, STAFF, FRIENDS AND FAMILY ARE WELCOME
Two hours Flex credit will be granted for GCC staff if both film and discussion are attended.
(GCC Flex Note: Not eligible for CPGUs unless work related. Total Flex hours from film and book clubs limited to 20% of obligation)


FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 12:30 p.m., San Gabriel 334