#91: Brazil
Part of the Top 150 Films series
I’m not a big fan of Monty Python. I’m not a big fan of over-fussy production design in films. I’m not even a massive fan of 1984-inspired art. Yet Brazil is the middle of this weird Venn diagram and I love it to pieces. Like all Gilliam films, it’s anarchic and undisciplined, but it’s also funny, frightening, passionate, and unlike anything else ever made. Impeccably crafted, with the aforementioned production design being the jewel in the film’s crown, the film is brilliantly thought-through, and just plain crazy. How many other films have Robert De Niro as an insane air conditioner specialist? Or Tom Stoppard involved in writing a scene — any scene — with Katherine Helmond’s plastic surgery addict? How many films have those and make them thematic coherent, let alone the beautiful fantasy scenes or the fantastic Jonathan Pryce lead performance or that ending? And it’s all about bloody paperwork, huh!
