Word: orwellian
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People told us one had to watch one's words in public, yet they were very free with us in voicing their opposition to the junta. Furthermore, the government has not developed an oppressive, Orwellian ideology, but preaches only anti-communism. "Chile progresses in peace and order" was the first and last slogan we were to see in the country. Chilean propaganda is not propagated in manifestos and youth groups but through anaesthetic state-controlled television and movie imports like Rambo...
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...
When Lowry's situation becomes an Orwellian equivalent of Golgotha, however, the line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred. The living nightmare around him fuses with the nightmare inside Lowry's mind, and we no longer know if what is happening is really happening. All of his wildest dreams come true, as do his worst nightmares. This is perhaps both the best and worst part of the movie, for even though this sequence is entertaining, it is as disjointed and confused as the most bizarre of our dreams...
Gilliam has called Brazil "Walter Mitty meets Franz Kafka" and describes its unique, post-Orwellian setting as "somewhere on the Los Angeles-Belfast border." The film's hero, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), shambles efficiently through his job at the Ministry of Information records department but lives for his dreams, in which he is girded like Lochinvar, aloft like Icarus, fighting to save a fair heroine from giant samurai and evil, baby-faced thugs. One day he meets Jill Layton (Kim Griest), a truck driver who lived in the flat above the late Mr. Buttle's and looks exactly like...
...recent years, a host of universities ranging from MIT to Stevens Tech in Hoboken, N.J. have jumped boldly into the computerization race, prompting Orwellian superstition and unrestrained hype over how technology could wipe out higher education as we know it. Harvard, in the meantime, remained quietly on the sidelines, playing the role of spectator in the high-tech race. That is, until...