Obviously, Gilliam's Brazil is a modern classic of the cinema. The Gilliam's talent to create illusive, fascinating, surrealistic images is revealed in the Brazil movie. The detailed depiction of the futuristic world of the comprehensive bureaucracy is combined with various beautiful lyric digressions of the subconscious world.

Various critics compare this movie to the Orwell's "1984" novel and Kafka's "Trial". Indeed, the plot of the movie revolves around the story of the the common citizen of the future society, the grain of sand in the great hierarchy, the brick of the invincible, omnipotent system. A fly, a bug crushed by the voracious bureaucratic machine. The flaw which has to be removed in the orderly system.

Nevertheless, don't expect this movie to be sombre and dystopian like the works of famous classics. The chimerical, fanciful illusions, the absurd, preposterous reality and the intellectual irony - all these make the movie even more profound and captivating.

The reality of Brazil is especially peculiar, curious and intersting - nothing similar to the morose, macabre authoritarian regimes; it rather looks like a modern, Western democratic society. This era of Brazil is not ruled by some certain bloodthirsty dicator, it is governed by the hords of bureaucrats. The vigilance of people is calmed by the consumerist ideals. The total control is concealed and unnoticed. The feeling of happiness and prosperity hovers in the air.

Finally, what is actually Brazil? Brazil is never mentioned in the dialogues of the characters, only the film's soundtrack constantly reminds about the existence of some mythological Brazil. The dream, the subconscious place to escape, the eternal heaven in the main character's mind. While the society seeks its own ideals, the individual tries not to succumb his own imaginary "Brazil" to the real world. In other words, the movie can be described as a struggle of individual with the social, the dream with the reality.

Recommended: Yes