Bleak, yet quirky, Terry Gilliam’s 1985 dystopian film, Brazil, takes us to a country (possibly an alternate UK) run by a totalitarian, bureaucratic government under an establishment known as the Ministry of Information. Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce, is a government employee who isn’t very passionate of his job and often dreams of himself as a winged hero rescuing a damsel in distress. After a misprocessing of information leads to him to a woman identical to the one in his dreams named Jill, played by Kim Greist, he falls for her and tries to win her heart, leading him deeper and deeper into danger of being incarcerated and tortured by the ministry.

            The film was said to have been inspired by James Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with several parallels to the novel itself, including how the dystopian nation depicted in the film is governed by a ministry of information similar to how Oceania is governed by four ministries for truth, peace, plenty, and love, as well as Sam’s character in comparison to that of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Winston Smith.

            Nevertheless, unlike James Orwell’s novel which goes in detail about the state of the world where the story takes place, we aren’t given that much detailed information about the setting of Brazil. We do know that the time setting is sometime in the 20th century and that the government, like INGSOC in Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Oceania, is highly authoritarian; a bureaucratic system that runs the country through extremely strict regulations and the processing of information. The common people are also not monitored for their thoughts and there is no Big Brother figure. The common infrastructure and development in the city Brazil’s located at also involve a lot of quirky and whimsical machines, gadgets and gizmos that unfortunately seem rather hard to maintain, as there were several instances in the film where we see a machine malfunction and explode in public. Consumerism and materialism is notably rampant among the city’s populace, we see Sam’s mother and her friends obsessing over plastic surgery, a little girl wishing for a credit card for Christmas, people pushing carts filled with gifts and presents and a charity group with a sign that says “consume for Jesus”.  

            The ministry bases its information processing on a person’s whereabouts in terms of his occupation, purchases and acquiring of services, among other things. Getting out of order a number of times at some point could have one tortured and even excecuted. The ministry also prides itself for always being accurate. This isn’t the case, however, as that’s how the entire story starts; a fly falling into a typewriter, thus misspelling the name of an air conditioning specialist and terrorist, Archibald Tuttle, played by Robert De Niro, which leads to the ministry incarcerating and later killing a totally different, innocent individual. Tuttle’s crime simply being freelance subversion – working for multiple companies at multiple times behind the establishment’s back.

            Sam’s daydreams and his desire for Jill is once again similar to Ready Player One as it shows how many of us wish to escape from reality to the world of our dreams. He has no strong ambition, no passion in his occupation in his job, just the strong desire to be with Jill and run away with her. In the end, Sam’s search for Jill ends up with him incarcerated and set up to be violently interrogate. Just before, he’s rescued by Tuttle and his group of terrorists, destroying the Ministry headquarters after escaping. From there on, Sam just runs. From his boss, the masked monsters that perhaps represent the ministry and its officials, the chained people who perhaps represent the citizens oppressed by the regime, he finds his way back to Jill, and the two escape from the city and into the lush, green country side, ready to start a new life in seclusion. Suddenly, we are cut back to Sam in the torture chamber right before being tortured from earlier. At this point, he’s at a catatonic state, the escape had all been a dream. The film closes with him humming the song “Aqualera do Brasil”, trapped, possibly forever with Jill, who, in reality had died resisting police.