Film Friday: Brazil (1985)

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But does relative power corrupt as well? Terry Gilliam tells us that it does in Brazil, a film as notorious for its history as its content. Brazil is a fascinating, if unpleasant movie, about the abuse of power at every level of society. And while Gilliam makes a movie that deserves to be watched, his message ultimately fails.

** spoiler alert **

The Plot/Message

As anyone who has seen a Terry Gilliam film can attest, giving a quick plot summary is impossible. But if you distill the plot of Brazil to the bare minimum, you discover that Brazil is a thinly-veiled remake of 1984: Meek boy lives in repressive world. Boy meets girl. Boy thinks girl is an anti-state terrorist, decides to become terrorist to impress the girl, and ends up causing girl to become target of the state.

But it isn’t the plot that matters so much in Brazil as it is the individual characters Gilliam offers. Brazil is about the abuse of power at every level of society. Brazil revolves around the consequences that flow from a clerical error which causes the state to issue a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Archebald Buttle, when it was actually looking to arrest a “terrorist” named Archibald Tuttle. It is because Mrs. Buttle was overcharged for the costs of interrogating and executing her husband that we meet our hero, Sam Lowry, a low-level, meek bureaucrat played convincingly by Jonathan Pryce. Through Sam, we meet characters in every walk of life, each of whom abuses whatever power they have over others. Let us consider the characters Gilliam offers, and their sins:

• The State: Throughout the movie, the state is an omnipresent character. The police are on every corner, the secret police in every shadow. But while the state is meant to represent Orwell’s Oceana, this government is sclerotic and verges on collapse due to bureaucratic entropy and incompetence. Indeed, the character representing the highest echelons of government is Mr. Helpmann, a physically crippled man who needs Sam’s help even to use the toilet. The symbolism is intentional.

Gilliam’s government is obsessed with terrorism. It believes that a group of anti-government terrorists are setting off bombs all over the country, and it is ruthlessly rounding up people to try to stop them. Yet, as the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear there are no terrorists: the explosions are the result of inept repair work conducted by the Central Services Agency -- a government agency that tightly controls the maintenance field. It is also clear the government is rounding up innocent people, like Mr. Buttle.

• Mr. Kurtzmann (Ian Holm): Sam first introduces us to his boss. Kurtzmann (whose name is symbolic of his position) is the low man on the bureaucratic totem pole. He runs an office that sits about as far below the political power structure as one can get in this world. But he has absolute power within that office. He thus acts the tyrant within his own office, but literally cowers before any duties that could bring attention from higher agencies. Moreover, he employs a series of passive-aggressive tactics, including faking dependence/ helplessness, to get Sam to take on the responsibilities of Kurtzmann’s position. And when he fears that Sam will leave his office through promotion, Kurtzmann sabotages that promotion by rejecting it on Sam’s behalf (and without Sam’s knowledge).

• Sam’s Mother Ida (Katherine Helmond): When Sam becomes obsessed with helping Jill, he decides he must get himself promoted to a new agency -- the Ministry of Information. Because Kurtzmann already declined the promotion for him, Sam seeks the help of his mother in getting the promotion offered a second time. His mother is a rich socialite who has connections to Mr. Helpmann. She uses those connections to get Sam the promotion, i.e. uses her influence to extract a personal favor from government. She also abuses the power afforded to her through her wealth to attract young male gold-diggers and to obtain the services of the best doctor in the land (who himself abuses his patients’ trust to engage in a sort of heinous race with another doctor to conduct the most bizarre plastic surgeries). Finally, she abuses her influence over Sam to control his life, even going so far as to attempt to arrange a marriage for him.

• Spoor (Bob Hoskins): As we wait to see whether Sam’s mother can affect his promotion, Sam’s air conditioner breaks. This coincidence introduces us to the real Mr. Archibald Tuttle (Robert De Niro). Tuttle is a rogue mechanic, mechanicing without a license. He is the one symbol in the film that the world could be a better place. And his presence is immediately offset by the arrival of Spoor and Spoor’s assistant. Spoor is a mechanic from Central Services. He and his assistant use the power the state has given them to demand access to Sam’s home so they can snoop around. When Sam responds by throwing their own regulations back at them as a roadblock -- indeed, they failed to bring the appropriate form to make the repair -- they are driven away. But they return with a vengeance, using their bureaucratic power to occupy Sam’s home and make his life hell.

• Mr. Warrenn (Ian Richardson): Sam’s promotion introduces us to the first character who appears to be competent, efficient, and redeeming -- mid-level bureaucrat Mr. Warrenn. Warrenn moves through the office in a dance of bureaucratic efficiency, reviewing requests and barking out commanding orders. This is a man who seems to get things done. Unfortunately, upon closer examination, we quickly discover that Warrenn’s decisions involve trivial matters, and that he is more concerned that his employees worship him and wear suits of his liking than he is with any sort of actual work. He is thus abusing his power to turn his office into a form of cult.

• Sam’s “deskmate”: As Sam settles into his 4’ x 3’ office, we meet the man who shares his desk, though they both sit in separate offices -- the desk protrudes through the wall. Because these two men are of equal level, they fight over the desk, each trying to yank the desk more into their office. As a temporary truce is called, Sam discovers that this deskmate has a computer that may contain the information he needs. Although the deskmate does not even know how to turn the computer on, he refuses to let Sam use the computer simply because having the computer on his desk gives him the power to withhold such consent. Sam eventually learns from the computer that Jill has become a suspected terrorist.

• Jack (Michael Palin): When Sam learns that Jill is in danger, he seeks the help of his old school friend Jack, who works at Information Retrieval. Jack is the most heavy-handed of Gilliam’s abusers. While he is warm and friendly with Sam, and we see him playing with his own young daughter in his office, we also learn that Sam tortures (and kills) suspects in the back room of his office. Jack, like the rest, seems to delight in using the vast power given to him and we know he abuses that power because we know he is torturing and killing innocent people.

In each instance, the characters Gilliam gives us abuse the little bits of power they are given. It is against this backdrop that we are given Jill and Sam.

Sam “The Hero”

Sam first sees Jill when he attempts to return the overcharge to Mrs. Buttle. Jill is perhaps the only non-abusive character because she is the common worker. . . a prole. She drives a truck, her skin is dirty, and she has no power over anyone. Unfortunately for her, she looks like the girl in Sam’s dreams and thus becomes his obsession. To satisfy this obsession, Sam decides to help her, whether she wants his help or not. His help will ultimately convince the state that she is a terrorist, which will lead to her arrest. Her ultimate fate is not known, though we can infer she will die like all the other suspects.

Sam is ostensibly the hero, though he is never heroic. He dreams of being a hero, but his real life is cowardly. He lets events dictate his action -- indeed Gilliam consciously made sure Sam never speaks first in any scene. He is easily manipulated by those around him, through pleas for help, appeals to loyalty, or simple fear. And the few instances where he takes it upon himself to act “heroically,” his actions are reactionary, poorly-conceived, poorly-executed, abusive in nature, and get everyone into more trouble than they were in before he started helping them. Indeed, it is only because of his actions that Jill gets marked as a terrorist.

Any heroism in Sam is in his own head. Not only does he repeatedly have fantasies in which he is the white knight fighting evil to rescue the girl, but when he is finally arrested and is being interrogated by his friend Jack, he fantasizes that Tuttle and a group of other terrorists come save him. In the process, they destroy the government and save Jill. We know this to be a fantasy because Tuttle dies when he is eaten by litter. And Sam recognizes the impossibility of this as well, but rather than returning to reality, Sam chooses instead to remain in his fantasy world and to imagine he and Jill escape to live a happy life in the country. But this ending is soon revealed to be false as the camera pulls us back to reality, where Sam remains in Jack’s chair, with his mind gone. He has given up.

More important than Sam’s failed heroism is the fact that every instance in which Sam obtains power (however minor) he abuses it. When he realizes the guards will fear him because of his badge, he plays this up gleefully. When he gains access to the government computer he uses that access to satisfy his personal desires to spy on Jill. When he realizes he has the power to involve himself in Jill’s life, he does so to satisfy his obsession, making decisions for her, without ever stopping to wonder whether satisfying his own desires is good for her or what she would want. Every single time Sam obtains some power, he abuses it. And that is Gilliam’s message -- all power corrupts, not just absolute power.

Where Gilliam Fails

Yet, while his message is worthwhile, Gilliam ultimately fails to make his point. Sam is a character with no redeeming qualities. By comparison, real people are a complex mix of good and bad. Pryce plays a very subtle and nuanced character, but he is nevertheless a half-character. Thus, we never see Sam as a warning to ourselves because he is so one-dimensional. Since we cannot sympathize with Sam, we cannot attribute his failings to ourselves. Thus, the message is lost.

Also, Gilliam offers us no glimpse of how we should be acting. Where is the example that teaches us how we should behave? How do you act in a world were relative power exists in every relationship? Without this guidance, the movie does little more than offer the philosophical equivalent of “that sucks.” Even uber-critic Roger Ebert failed to grasp the point to this movie:

“The movie is very hard to follow. I have seen it twice, and am still not sure exactly who all the characters are, or how they fit. . . there seems to be no sure hand at the controls.”

But most significantly, Gilliam fails in his very purpose. Gilliam meant Brazil to be an attack on Thatcherism. However, his intent is not at all clear as nothing in the film resembles Thatcher’s England. Moreover, Gilliam fails to grasp that the target of his attacks are in fact the very things Thatcher struggled to overcome: corrupt bureaucracy, lazy unions, large faceless government, and concentrations of power. Indeed, with no sense of irony at all, Gilliam has stated that much to his “surprise” Brazil has apparently become “a favorite film of the far right in America.” Silly Terry, civil liberties are for righties.

Despite this failure, Gilliam has a point -- power corrupts, not just absolute power. And Brazil is an interesting, though disturbing film, that deserves to be watched.

History of Brazil/The Sheinberg Version

Brazil was originally released internationally at 142 minutes; a 131 minute version was prepared for United States audiences. But when the movie didn’t test well, Universal Chairman Sid Sheinberg cut the movie down to 94 minutes and gave the movie a happy ending. If you’ve ever seen it on television, that’s the version you saw. . . and you probably hated it. It wasn't until the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded the 131 minute, unreleased version their Best Picture Award for 1985, that Universal finally agreed to release the longer version.

When Sheinberg cut the 94 minute version, he was concerned that American audience could not understand this film because (1) Sam was too passive to be a hero, (2) the movie lacked a happy ending, and (3) it lacked an American star in the lead role. Thus, he re-edited the film to make Sam appear more assertive, even though this makes his character appear petulant and prone to unexplained outbursts. Indeed, he re-edited most scenes to make Sam speak first, thus eliminating the dialog that caused most of Sam’s outbursts. Sheinberg also cut off the ending to leave the audience with the idea that Sam and Jill now live happily ever after. He also plays up Robert De Niro’s character Tuttle. To do this, he removed all suggestions that the terrorist threat was not real. Rather than being a rogue electrician in a collapsing world, Sheinberg uses Sam’s fantasies to create a real rebellion and to put Tuttle at its head. Interestingly, however, he leaves in the moment where Tuttle is eaten by paper. These changes convert the movie from an interesting rant into a surreal, confused jumble.

Stick with the longer versions.