From its opening minutes, Terry Gilliam\u2019s dystopian masterpiece Brazil<\/em> is suffused with the trappings \u2013 if not necessarily the spirit \u2013 of Christmas. A response to Margaret Thatcher\u2019s Great Britain (as was Alan Moore and David Lloyd\u2019s contemporary graphic novel V for Vendetta<\/em>), Brazil<\/em> starts on a Central Services commercial hawking their new \u201cdesigner\u201d ducts as the camera pulls back from a display of TV sets in a store window. As the spot ends, a shopper appears pushing a trolley laden with presents \u2013 just in time to be caught in the blast when the shop is bombed. In an instant, consumerism and terrorism are yoked together, especially in a society where one must go on in spite of the other or else the whole system would collapse. (See also: the upscale restaurant where a bomb explodes in the middle of lunch and everyone unaffected by it simply goes on eating.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The signifiers of Christmas are everywhere in Brazil<\/em>, from the cards, trees, and decorations in offices and homes to the carols played in the shopping center where Santa asks the girl on his lap what she would like for Christmas and she replies, \u201cMy own credit card.\u201d The same music is pumped into the lobby of the Ministry of Information\u2019s Department of Records, where our hero, Sam Lowry, works in the kind of low-level bureaucratic job that allows him to keep his head down and avoid drawing attention to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s entirely possible Archibald Buttle, shoe repair operative, also kept his head down, but a computer error (a literal bug in the system) generates an arrest warrant that dispatches a squad of black-armored troopers to bring him in for questioning, wrecking his sitting room while his wife and children cower in fear. One minute Mrs. Buttle is reading from A Christmas Carol<\/em> while her son is playing with toy soldiers, the next her husband is buckled into a canvas sack by the genuine article and she is presented with a form to sign. \u201cThis is my receipt for your receipt,\u201d says the official as Mr. Buttle is bundled off to the Ministry, from which he will not return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next time the Buttle flat is seen, it\u2019s still in disarray. The occasion is Sam\u2019s na\u00efve attempt to do a good deed by delivering a refund check to Mrs. Buttle (\u201cYou know, it being Christmas and all\u201d) to compensate for the fact that her husband died under interrogation. There he glimpses his dream girl in the form of the Buttles\u2019 upstairs neighbor, but Sam\u2019s pursuit of the elusive Jill Layton is stymied because his security clearance isn\u2019t worth a damn. To get around that, he accepts a promotion to Information Retrieval arranged by his mother, who has a giant Christmas tree in her luxury flat to rival the one at Records. In fact, the few places without decorations of any kind are Sam\u2019s and Jill\u2019s flats, as neither is inclined to receive visitors, and the lobby of Information Retrieval, which has no use for such frivolity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout Brazil<\/em>, Gilliam humanizes the cogs in the machine of society, including the ones who wear tactical gear. Even the security guards at Information Retrieval have festive decorations in their basement headquarters and are heard oafishly rehearsing \u201cThe First Noel\u201d for some Ministry function. There\u2019s no better personification of Hannah Arendt\u2019s concept of the banality of evil, though, than Sam\u2019s friend Jack Lint, a devoted family man who happens to be a professional torturer. That he\u2019s one of several characters who gives Sam the same exact executive toy (which his mother boasts is \u201cvery exclusive\u201d) is one of the film\u2019s great running jokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there\u2019s deputy minister Eugene Helpmann, the genial public face of the Ministry who, in a scene left out of the US theatrical cut, visits Sam dressed as Father Christmas. The explanation for this is his next stop is an orphanage (\u201cCan\u2019t keep the orphans waiting,\u201d he says), but who are these orphans and were they created on his watch? Considering how many supposed terrorists get bagged up on a daily basis, the implication is all too plausible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While its seasonal setting would make it a natural December release, Brazil<\/em> originally came out in France and the UK in February 1985, then made its way around Europe, Australia, and South America. All the while, Gilliam fought with American distributor Universal over the running time and ending, a struggle detailed in Jack Matthews\u2019s book The Battle of Brazil<\/em>. Its hand forced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, which awarded Brazil<\/em> Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, Universal grudgingly gave it an Oscar-qualifying run that resulted in two nominations (for its screenplay and art direction) and a glowing review in Time<\/em> which was, as Gilliam put it on his commentary, \u201cthe Christmas gift I wanted.\u201d It\u2019s certainly better than any executive toy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBrazil\u201d is available for rent or purchase from <\/em>the usual outlets<\/em><\/a>. Just don\u2019t call Central Services unless it\u2019s an emergency.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/brazil2-1024x576.png\")
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