Word: braziller
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Brazil...
...Brazil, an equally disturbing new film from Python member Terry Gilliam, this darkly comic "Bright Side" philosophy is brought to its ultimate extreme. Using a setting strongly derived from George Orwell's 1984, Gilliam gives us a hero whose world is so dark that he loses the ability to see anything but the bright side...
...disjointed world in which Brazil (the name comes from a song which the hero is fond of singing) takes place, tragedy and absurdity are inextricably mixed, as is evident from the very first scenes. Early on, we are taken deep into the bowels of the Ministry of Information a bureaucratic, Leviathan institution no doubt based on Orwell's Ministry of Truth. A fastidious technician is clambering over an enormous teletype machine while in pursuit of an equally enormous, noisy fly, which he dispatches with his shoe. The fly falls into the machine, and causes it to type the name "Buttle...
...alumnus who directed the 1981 surprise hit Time Bandits, felt as forlorn as his hero. The studio, which had just emerged from a noisy battle with Director Peter Bogdanovich over the cutting and scoring of his film Mask, demanded in March that Gilliam reduce his 2-hr. 22-min. Brazil, already in distribution in Europe, to the contracted 2 hr. 5 min. (The average running time for the last 25 winners of the Best Picture Oscar is a leisurely 2 hr. 26 min.; Universal's only other Christmas release, Out of Africa, runs 2 hr. 34 min.) When Gilliam delivered...
...have to look for Gilliam in seventh heaven. "The turnaround has been amazing," he says. "A week ago, this film didn't exist. Now it is winning awards and qualifying for the Oscars." For his part, Sheinberg sounds resigned. As he sees it, Gilliam is not the underdog of Brazil but the terrorist. "I personally wouldn't work with Mr. Gilliam again," he says. "But it has nothing to do with his talents as a director. I don't respect his talent as a human being." Cheer up, Sid. A terrific movie has escaped the asylum without a lobotomy...