BRAZIL (1985)

By Steve Biodrowski     June 07, 2001

Terry Gilliam's dystopian futuristic fantasy distills through clichés of 1984 through a filter inspired by BLADE RUNNER, resulting in one of the most successful attempts ever at creating a world on film. If the story is a bit fuzzy, the imagery is more than enough to make up for it, and Jonathan Pryce's performance locks us into the character of Sam, a cog in the huge mechanistic society who becomes motivated to rebel against the restraints imposed upon him. Along the way, Bob Hoskins, Robert DeNiro, and Michael Palin make memorable appearances, and Gilliam enlivens the drab world with cutaway sequences showing Sam's heroic dreams. Dark and uncompromising, the film is filled with hopeless despair, against which these fantasies seen to be the only antidote. The ending seems to confirm this, with Sam locked away in his dream world, in a sense have 'escaped' for his captors.