Steven Brence
10-14-2009, 08:22 AM
1. In regards to the death of Mr. Buttle, is Jack Lint’s defense of himself to Sam convincing? He argued that it was not his fault, insofar as he understood himself to be interrogating (torturing) Mr. Tuttle who had no heart condition. He prefers to lay the blame on Information Transit who delivered the wrong man to him. Following that logic, however, is anyone to blame for Buttle’s death? What are the moral implications of this view?
2. One of the obvious references of the film is to George Orwell’s 1984. In fact, Terry Gilliam’s working title for Brazil was “1984½“. It is clear that Sam Lowry stands in for the earlier drama’s Winston Smith, but what or who in Brazil would be the equivalent of 1984’s "Big Brother"? What does it suggest about the nature of political authority, as it is portrayed in Brazil, that there is no very obvious answer to this question?
3. If Brazil is regarded as a portrait of ourselves, however hyperbolic and distorted as it may at first seem, what can we learn from it in regards to ourselves? Its hero, after all, who merely dreamed of things like love and freedom, was left at the end of the film lost in a torture induced dream world, friendless and with his would-be lover dead, crushed by a paranoid bureaucracy that regarded as a threat any effort by ordinary citizens to seek the truth. Are we not warned by the film that the cost of dreaming of a more authentic happiness may only bring us total ruin? Is there any more liberatory lesson we might take from the film?
4. As Sam’s dream sequences progress, the open skies he initially soars in are replaced by towering constructions from a ground that can no longer be defied by free flight, and he is left wingless and forced to do battle with a nightmarish monster. Upon slaying this monster, however, and removing its mask, he finds himself inside. What does this mean? How is Sam perhaps coming to realize that he is his own enemy, that he is that against which he must struggle first in any effort to recover his freedom? What does this suggest about the nature of political power and the possibilities for resisting it?
5. Four times in the film, twice from Harry Tuttle and twice in the form of the ubiquitous propaganda signs that decorate the city, it is claimed that “we are all in it together”. What is the “it” that we are meant to be in, however? Once, in Sam’s final dream, the implication is that the “it” is happiness. Once, upon the filling with excrement and exploding of the environmental suits worn by the two Central Services repairmen, the “it” we are in together is asserted to be shit. A third time, in the form of a graffiti modified poster, the two assertions compete with each other. What is Brazil suggesting here? Is happiness, at least as it is rendered and realized in the film, being equated with shit? In any case, what is the form of the togetherness that is asserted?
2. One of the obvious references of the film is to George Orwell’s 1984. In fact, Terry Gilliam’s working title for Brazil was “1984½“. It is clear that Sam Lowry stands in for the earlier drama’s Winston Smith, but what or who in Brazil would be the equivalent of 1984’s "Big Brother"? What does it suggest about the nature of political authority, as it is portrayed in Brazil, that there is no very obvious answer to this question?
3. If Brazil is regarded as a portrait of ourselves, however hyperbolic and distorted as it may at first seem, what can we learn from it in regards to ourselves? Its hero, after all, who merely dreamed of things like love and freedom, was left at the end of the film lost in a torture induced dream world, friendless and with his would-be lover dead, crushed by a paranoid bureaucracy that regarded as a threat any effort by ordinary citizens to seek the truth. Are we not warned by the film that the cost of dreaming of a more authentic happiness may only bring us total ruin? Is there any more liberatory lesson we might take from the film?
4. As Sam’s dream sequences progress, the open skies he initially soars in are replaced by towering constructions from a ground that can no longer be defied by free flight, and he is left wingless and forced to do battle with a nightmarish monster. Upon slaying this monster, however, and removing its mask, he finds himself inside. What does this mean? How is Sam perhaps coming to realize that he is his own enemy, that he is that against which he must struggle first in any effort to recover his freedom? What does this suggest about the nature of political power and the possibilities for resisting it?
5. Four times in the film, twice from Harry Tuttle and twice in the form of the ubiquitous propaganda signs that decorate the city, it is claimed that “we are all in it together”. What is the “it” that we are meant to be in, however? Once, in Sam’s final dream, the implication is that the “it” is happiness. Once, upon the filling with excrement and exploding of the environmental suits worn by the two Central Services repairmen, the “it” we are in together is asserted to be shit. A third time, in the form of a graffiti modified poster, the two assertions compete with each other. What is Brazil suggesting here? Is happiness, at least as it is rendered and realized in the film, being equated with shit? In any case, what is the form of the togetherness that is asserted?