MovieChat Forums > Brazil (1985) Discussion > The flabby bits

The flabby bits

posted 8 years ago by Guasti-Q-Guasti
3 replies | jump to latest

Regarding the so-called battle for Brazil with the studio. As I understood it they would have been contractually obligated to accept Gilliam's cut, but he broke that deal by refusing to allow it to be trimmed down ultimately by something like just a few minutes.

IMHO there were a couple of places such as the initial fight with the giant Samurai and the truck ride with Jill, as well as perhaps other sequences which seemed to drag on a little. Perhaps if Gilliam had trimmed parts like these he could have easily reached the agreed running time. Therefore I wonder if he left these apparent flabby bits in essentially just to be a jerk.

[–] mythicdcuo 8 years ago

the giant samura represents the dir. LOVE OF AKIRA KORUSAWA films.
and i agree with you theres is some Unimportant PARTS.

[–] rascal67 7 years ago

I didn't mind the dream sequences and these worked wonderfully for me. Some snappier\snazzier editing wouldn't have gone astray overall. I have only seen the 143 euro version. The US version only lost about 11 mins, still bringing it in at over 2hrs. This was still too much.

Scenes of Sam in his apartment could have been trimmed, especially when he wakes up hot and calls for maintenance support. We didn't need to see him pottering around the place. Even when the maintenance guys arrived, I didn't find their antics that funny and more annoying. It needed to get pretty much right to Harry arriving to fix the problem and disposing of them. Also scenes of Sam at the office with Kurtzmann could have been tightened up a bit. 2hrs plus for an absurdist comedy was absurd. And lets face it, Sam was a pretty bland hero. This was the point of his character, so we didn't need to see any of the unnecessary mundane aspects of his life and make it appear more of a slog than it needed to be.

I feel Gilliam was being too self-indulgent with his run-time and he ended up making his film a tad uneven and too drawn out. While he was upset at Sheinberg's request to trim the film and was indignant about it, Sheinberg was right, it was too long. He ended up alienating some of his audience and they would have been more appreciative of a tighter, more close knit film, ala Time Bandits.

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[–] ElMaruecan82 7 years ago

I totally agree with you and with the previous points made.

The last Gilliam film I watched was "The Fisher King" and I quite enjoyed it but the story was never as brilliant and soul-penetrating as in the quieter and more realistic parts. It could have done without the Red Dragon hallucinations and even that Holy Grail subplot. But what Gilliams' movies say about him is that he has a sort of childlike obsession with "conflict" as something that can only be exposed through some big-scale extravaganza fights with high-tech effects and so forth, and that's exactly what almost ruined my enjoyment of "Brazil". The film is like a big party you're invited to, you enjoy yourself, you have fun, but because of two or three incidents, you're not sure you want to live the same experience again.

Now, there's no doubt that the film is brilliant and it's a great satire against the overwhelming effect of bureaucracy and even technology (although it is displayed in a retro-futuristic way), we are all literate enough to get all the Orwellian vibes from the film. No one who criticized it missed the point. But it's like Gilliams wants so much to emphasize the feeling of sheer confusion induced by the whole (mis)adventure that instead of making the story confusing by maintaining a solid plinth to the narrative, he made the experience of following the film, confusing as well. At one moment, you see Sam trying to find a woman, which in the actual setting is Herculean enough a task and another moment, he's a warrior fighting a giant Samurai. I love some artistic licenses, but talk about overkill. Gilliam had a good story at hands but he goes for sensationalism while he had enough material to design something thrilling in the content, without going for such hyperbolic action sequences. The result is uneven and infuriating.

When you trust your material, you don't need some pseudo psychedelic fights, chase sequences or other wall-crashing moments, action isn't always to be treated literally. Yes, this is a world that takes some monster Godzilla-like size, but I don't care that Gilliam wanted to make a homage to Kurosawa with the Samurai-figure, just make a tribute to "Ikiru" which was a real movie about bureaucracy, and it'll be fine. The same goes with the Brazilian escapist moments, first it's poetic and dreamlike, but they are so redundant that you don't know which story you're supposed to follow in the end. It says a lot about Gilliam and his tendency to make polarizing movies when they're no need for it. Indeed, we need a story, you can't make the most cleverer satire without trying to confuse the audience but, it's like some suicidal impulse from Gilliam that is somewhat more fascinating than the film's content.

I tried to watch "Brazil" twice, the first time, I fell asleep, the second, I turned it off because I was tired of trying to figure out what point he wanted to make with this or that scene. Now. I finally made it till the end, and while I acknowledge that there was some potential in this film and some scenes are nothing short but masterpieces: the Metropolis-like shots, any scene with Katharine Helmond and Ian Holm, and some brilliant little touches like the duct on the dog's poo-hole, this is still one of the cases where the final cut should've been shorter. The element that is constantly praised by the fans is the critics against bureaucracy, well, that makes the whole fights and chases quite useless, and what about the heart of the story: Sam?

Sam was a great character, the perfect straight-man to this tragicomedy, why not making him someone who really wants to go to Brazil? Why not creating some deeper connection with the woman, not just "curiosity"? How about the Harry Tuttle guy? The film had plenty of directions to take, but it just makes his main protagonist wander in a dystopian universe, encountering the most eccentric characters, and punctuate the film with a few actions sequences. I love the way Siskel described the movie: "It beautifully beats to death one point" He nails it. This is the film the expressions "insisting upon itself" was invented for, and even the whole bureaucracy thing is a bit overrated.

I don't know if this comment will be useful for anyone, but if I want a great and short satire about bureaucracy, I watch "The Place That Sends You Mad" segment from "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix". Now, that's perhaps the best critic against bureaucracy ever made, and it didn't need any special effects or fight sequences.

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