Terry Gilliam
Brazil

Brazil. A nightmare ahead of its time…

"The best science fiction movie ever made." Harlan Eleison

And I add: "If Kafka had been born a director, he would have made this film himself". This "Brazil" indeed falls within a atypical and surreal science fiction of Kafkaesque mold that merges comedy, tragedy, noir, and science fiction as it had never happened before (it's 1985, we're talking about more than 20 years ago!). Everything began "prophetically" in 1984, the year the production of the film started, which coincidentally coincides with the great Orwellian novel it was inspired by (although director Terry Gilliam claimed he had never read it before!).

The story tells of the great anxiety modern society has regarding the relationship between individuals, touching on themes such as psychological and cultural submission first and foremost, and the dominance of a small group of people over the lives of a larger portion of the population, even reaching the control of ultimate desires and dreams (do you think we're that far off today?!).
Compared to the cinematic version by Michael Radford, who made the dark and claustrophobic film "1984," the merit of Terry Gilliam (former member of the Monty Python) was to give the film "lightness" and the typically British irony that prevails a bit throughout the film and draws its strength from the apparently more obsessive and distressing scenes. As if inviting us to "smile" and always capture the easy side of things, even in situations that seem to have no way out. Therefore, the contrast between the events that happen and the sarcastic and ironic representation of them becomes absolutely irresistible, as if it were all part of a dream (or a nightmare) that will eventually dissolve like a soap bubble.

But the film is also a ruthless satire against bureaucracy and the massification of the individual with bursts of absolute genius and "foresight" that were then unthinkable for those years (the scene of the mother obsessed with plastic surgery who remodels her face weekly, for example, already a precursor of the current Silicone-Mania that now grips 40% of our women).

In short, it is about an anonymous little clerk named Sam Lowry, one of the many who spends his sad existence in the underground cities controlled by a totalitarian and omnipotent regime, continuously dreaming of being a winged hero living a love story with a woman of angelic form, saving her from a huge and evil monster.
Fortunately, the Central Government does not yet control dreams, and so, through mistakes and various adventures, among rebels fighting against the system and the fear of facing one's fears and obsessions, our little clerk will face the ugliness of the dictatorial society in an infernal descent of Dantesque memory until the fulfillment of his dream: to really meet the woman he had only imagined before.
A refined fable full of quotations, with visionary and dreamlike solutions of overwhelming strength, interspersed with a thousand comic ideas and pungent sarcasm (heritage of the old crazy group he belonged to).

"Brazil" is a convoluted, complex, original science fiction, often ramshackle but at the same time ingenious like few others. A film that has now become a classic of the genre, especially for the boundless imagination of its director who has probably given us his Masterpiece, unsurpassed today on many fronts (nomination for the Oscar for original screenplay by Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, and Charles McKeown, the set designs by Norman Garwood, as well as for music, sound, and song).

An absolutely must-see film for its relevance and for having described a future ultimately not too far from the one we are about to live in the next 20 years (with all due respect... sob!).