10/17/20 Brazil

Post date: Oct 11, 2020 1:03:53 PM

Because the net high school play is 1984, it is appropriate to watch "Brazil".

"Brazil" is the movie Terry Gilliam made just after "Time Bandits". Gilliam got the deal done which gave him final cut. I am sure that Hollywood was interesting in another cute story about a boy having adventures through time.

"Brazil" was not that. It is story of an every man coping in a dystopian society. His only escape is when he is asleep and dreaming. The famous play-write, Tom Stoppard, who was hired to fine-tune Brazil story asked Gilliam how he was influence by George Orwell's "1984" Gilliam said he has never read "1984"

Like "1984", it is not a easy movie to watch, it is still worth it for its uniqueness.

The movie is an incredible display of production design. All the sets have a sense of Gilliam's animation style.

Gilliam was careful with his budget and decided to no film half of the dream sequences because they were too expensive. The criteria channel has a great extra where they show story boards of all those un-filmed scenes.

When the film was in post production, various studio heads saw the film and found it too down beat to sell. What follows in the second most infamous studio re-editing after Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons". The saga is documented in a "Criterion channel" movie and "The Battle of Brazil" Book. Long story short, the studio produce a cut of the film that highlighted the romance and down played everything else. This was pretty clueless since the romance is the weakness part of the movie. Personally, I would take the movie with the romance cut out. The studio's cut is referred to as "Love Conquers All" This was going to be the cut that was shown to the public but for the fact that Gilliam did an illegal showing his cut to the Los Angeles Film critics and they awarded it movie of the year.

Watching both version is fascinating. Just by moving things around and using different takes, the main character is shown to be in control of his destiny which he was not in Gilliam's movie.