Word: gilliams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Directed by Terry Gilliam...
...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...
This all sounds pretty Orwellian, but here comes Gilliam's comic twist. Almost immediately after the dust settles, a man in a tweed suit walks in and politely gives the terrified Mrs. Buttle a receipt for her husband before leading him away. At the same moment, state-employed maintenance men begin shouting at the stormtroopers through the shattered ceiling, cursing them for messing up the heating system...
...WHAT GILLIAM GIVES us here is a masterpiece of irony--inhumanity with a human face. The same storm-troopers who destroy the Buttle home are later seen relaxing among themselves, complaining about how hot their uniforms are, and even practicing Christmas carols. Within the Ministry itself, barried, faceless clerks evade the hawkish eyes of their supervisors in order to watch Casablanca on their telescreens. Although these people are serving under a brutal system, they are nonetheless living creatures, unlike the automatons of Orwell's novel. There is even a resistance movement, evidencing itself in a variety of sudden explosions, which...
Bound in this political and technological straitjacket is Gilliam's hero, the unassuming, unambitious Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce). In order to find a little peace and quiet, Lowry spends every spare moment fantasizing about another life. In his dreams, we find him coursing through the clouds over a fairytale landscape, and fighting to rescue a beautiful maiden (Kim Greist), a stark contrast to his humdrum daily existence in which we find him ably solving problems for his incompetent but adoring boss (Ian Holme...