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Brazil is one of the most highly regarded films of all time since it was released. The movie presents a classic visual effect combined with a satirical story depicted by the characters. Created by Terry Gilliam, the movie’s motif expresses the possibility of a future where technology reigns supreme in a blackly comic tale surrounded by a fictional world. Gilliam points to the struggle of Sam Lowry against staleness and the warning to a totalitarian society. This paper will discuss the structural analysis and stylistic device used to make the plot and how different scenes relate to the movie.
The movie is based on Sam Lowry, a low-level clerk in the oppressive ministry of information. He finds his life upside down after getting involved in a case of mistaken identity painting him as an enemy of society. After rescuing the helpless damsel in distress from the blast, Lowry becomes a hero, only for a mechanical error that leads to the arrest of an innocent man instead of the suspected terrorist. In desperation to right wrong, he ends up meeting with a mysterious young woman named Jill. This leads to the existence of his two worlds throughout the film. He faces reality and oppression from totalitarian government and the fantasy world of struggle to save Jill from the pressure. This expresses the insanity in Lowry as he drags himself into a surreal romance with a woman in his dream suspect of a terrorist bringing a situation of worthless conclusion.
The film is set at 8 pm in the 20th century and encompasses ancient backgrounds full of the blackened environment (Stivers 22). It is packed with outdated typewriters, computer consoles, strange cars, and scenes full of neon-lit streets. The images were wide-angle with 14mm, 11mm, and 9.8 mm lenses. The production was done in a grey metal dust environment as the sun went down, giving the film a unique experience. There is a film noir, a cinematic style that made Brazil an inspiration for many movies. Gilliam mixed mainstream Hollywood production with various exterior scenes filmed in the monumental complex to achieve this style (BFI). There is excellent sound and music used in different settings for better viewing.
Gilliam’s use of the camera is a distinct one throughout the film. He has filled the movie with rich visual spectacle scenes connected to his central theme of reality and fantasy. Different camera lenses are used with shorter focal lengths at distinct stages. Brazil has a presentation of Dutch camera angles and special effects that create the uneasy and unsettled words used by the characters. These visual styles connect various scenes to the plot by making the film only believable in the world created and individual spaces.
The film structure is matched with outstanding visuals incorporated with the thematic concept to convey the message. Gilliam makes the globe explore the challenges in modern society. This is expressed through the view of an office worker disappointed by his bureaucratic community. Through this masterpiece film, Gilliam makes the world see how hard it is to escape from reality. Lowry is trying to get by life through a sufficiently rewarding job while his family and friends want him to advance in his paperwork-driven system, a way in which society measures success. Lowry starts dreaming of a beautiful lady instead, whom he finally meets and destroys his life struggling to save her from the bureaucratic system.
There is the use of imagery to connect scenes and events to the plot and themes. Through imagery, the viewers learn how Sam spends most part learning how to interact and live in his environment but fails to mature. He is sent to the interrogation chamber at the end, representing his inability to learn and grow (Marks 25). The old computers and elevators show the modern technology that has failed in society. There is a monologue at the end of the movie from the protagonist Lowry (Öke Prettyman). He sings his imagination in a cityscape divided into high-rise residential blocks the old Brazil to which he resolves to return to the one that existed before the military coup.
There is a dramatic allusion to the Hamlet figure presented in Lowry. His mother is concerned about his advancement in his career and is ready to use her influence and ensure Sam gets a promotion. His deceased father was a superior and close friend of the deputy minister, influential in the information ministry. Jeremiah appears as the ghost in the machine and helps Sam crack the elevator code. Brazil is a movie one cannot watch without a smile because of the humor and comedy invested in the film (Hazelrigg 165). There are downfalls and needless death that falls in the machine causing a printing error in one of the significant humorous scenes of the movie. The humor used leads to the plot connection of how the society has too much propriety and not enough empathy.
There is the use of satire throughout the film expressed by the characters and the occurrence of events. At the beginning of the film, the events occur during the holiday season, but the consumer society of Brazil’s busy shopping for their holiday and having fun while bombs are going off in the same room (Donatini 120). Gilliam combined dystopian elements to show Lowry’s visual satire, whose life is in the middle of a nightmare. Through comedy, the world understands Sam’s heavy price for associating with Jill, a beautiful woman he was determined to save from the system’s oppression. The opening of the film is full of ironic twists of events.
The movie starts with a television-playing advertisement, after which the shop window explodes, superimposing the neo-stylized title of the film. The irony is evident when the television continues to function despite the explosion broadcasting interview with government officials who are heard regarding a recent terrorist bombing (Kang 16). This irony helps one understand how the government works and how the bombings cannot stop government functions and its processes.
The film employs symbolism aimed at making the plot a success. This stylistic device is experienced the first time Jill appears in the movie. She is naked and seated in a bath, symbolizing purification since there is charcoal gray water showing the filth that she has just washed off. In addition, Sam, like other people in the ministry, is always shown wearing a charcoal gray suit. There is symbolic use where Sam and Jill engage in a mirror. Sam is fighting Jill at some stage, who is himself a representation that Jill is guilty. The viewers understand the superego in Sam portrayed by a scolding mother who demands perfection from him. Jill appears dressed like Mrs. Lowry and speaks like her, eventually confirming the symbolism in the film.
Work Cited
BFI. “Terry Gilliam on Brazil |.” youtube. 2014. Web.
Donatini, Hilary Teynor. “Something for an Executive:” Satire in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 35.2 (2018): pp.119-136.
Hazelrigg, Lawrence. “Efficacy and Efficiency in the World of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 103.2 (2020): pp.158-183.
Kang, Seung. “A Study on the Reification of Collective Memory and Cultural Memory Constructed at Brazil (Terry V. Gilliam, 1985).” The Korean Journal of animation 16.3 (2020): pp.7–25. Online. Internet. 2021.
Marks, Peter. “Dreams, fantasies, and nightmares.” Terry Gilliam. Manchester University Press, 2017.
Öke Prettyman, Burcu. “The Changing Face of Dystopia Represented in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil: A Cultural Materialist Study.” (2019).
Stivers, Richard. The media creates us in its image and other essays on technology and culture. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2020.
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