Brazil: Did you like it?: Philosophy Forums

Philosophy Forums » Philosophy of the Arts » Brazil: Did you like it? » Brazil: Did you like it?

Brazil: Did you like it?

xzJoel
Bio-clump

Usergroup: Sponsors
Joined: Aug 30, 2005
Location: New Jersey

Total Topics: 32
Total Posts: 842

Posted 08/18/09 - 05:23 AM: Subject: Brazil: Did you like it?	#1
I recently watched Brazil and am a little confused about why some people like it so much. I am curious what, if anything, someone here took from the movie or found in the movie that makes it so remarkable. I am particularly interested in your philosophical take of the movie, but I wonder if people are being too generous when they find anything profound in it. For my part, I had to watch it in two sittings and had to force myself to finish it. (I watched the director's cut.) I was thoroughly unamused and profoundly disliked the main character. I felt that he was self-absorbed and delusional to the point where I could not empathize with him at all. I am very sympathetic to absurdism, so it isn't as if the ending upset/disturbed me. I did not, however, find his break at the end to be either out of character or unexpected. I wouldn't have been shocked if the whole movie was just a dream sequence of a mad man. Did Gilliam succeed in an of your minds of making a happy ending to the film by making the hero go insane? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
Make a joyous noise onto the lord... Not a good one, just a joyous one.

Nihilistic Locomotive
Coprophagic coprophobic

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Nov 27, 2003

Total Topics: 61
Total Posts: 1692

Posted 08/18/09 - 05:10 PM:	#2
I remember little of Brazil and could not finish it. My impression is that Gilliam needed to address his theme with a little more existential gravity. His slapstick (lightheartedness) applied to a vision totalitarian bureaucracy somehow undercuts the atmospheric affect of George Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's bizarre and solemn labyrinths of alienation. Brazil's characters just don't comport with their environment. It reminds me strongly of the Italian movie by Roberto Bernini, about the comic who is sent to an internment camp with his son, and succeeds in distracting his child from the inescapable horrors of the Nazi regime. Gilliam is great with color and prop art though. His Adventures of Baron Munchausen was always my favorite movie as a kid.
Pseudophilosophy is a blessed art not to be taken seriously but to be enjoyed deeply.

swstephe
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Moderators
Joined: Apr 20, 2006
Location: borneo island

Total Topics: 28
Total Posts: 3304

Posted 08/18/09 - 08:15 PM:	#3
I like that movie, but I guess it is an acquired taste, and probably requires a substantial bit of British and American humor with intellectual satire. It isn't remarkable at all, I enjoy it for the visual style and rich visual images and jokes. Actually, he puts a lot of the same technical elements in "12 Monkeys". I think you hit on the key to the movie. The main character is the "proxy" for the audience. The movie is saying, "this is you, audience". You dislike the main character because the movie dislikes the main character and makes the character/audience the ultimate butt of the joke. He is the idealistic daydreamer who, like the audience, hopes for some final relief from frustration and gets it denied, (I know people who come up with their own fantasy ending about how the final scene wasn't "real" -- seems like you almost did the same thing). The movie is a bully, making fun of the unpopular kid. If you don't like it, you are the unpopular kid and the butt of the joke. If you like it, you are just pretending to be friends with the bully so you aren't the butt of the joke. You also have to understand a little about British humor, that there is often a faint thread of sympathy in saying, "Hey! Aren't we all like this when we watch the movies"? Americans tend to miss this point, despite being oblivious to the outrageous insults to the audience in American comedies.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

vykk_draygo
Graduate

Usergroup: Members
Joined: Aug 26, 2008
Location: Minnesota

Total Topics: 8
Total Posts: 177

Posted 08/25/09 - 09:21 PM:	#4
I didn't think it was a great movie, I just thought it was great satire. It was definitely sort of over-the-top, but I took the absurdism to be an exaggerated reflection of the quirks of normal life, and a view on how much stranger things might be in the future. The slapstick was necessary to lighten the mood, given the darker circumstances of the time period. I think it was a comedy disguised as a tragedy, not the other way around. That's why the ending works for me: it's bittersweet.
"But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?" H.P. Lovecraft

Tobias
Metaphysical exorcist

Usergroup: Moderators
Joined: Feb 17, 2003
Location: Just rub the mirror

Total Topics: 58
Total Posts: 5576

Posted 08/26/09 - 02:19 AM:	#5
I disliked it quite a bit, but found some jokes ammusing. The totalitairan theme has been done before and much better imo.
"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"

Sorry, you don't have permission to post. Log in, or register if you haven't yet.