Terry Gilliam’s directorial career is defined by persistent explorations of the dreams of overwhelmed or even delusional characters. They battle with both inner demons and the outer world in troubled efforts to save (or find) their humanity. It is a trademark of his directorial vision and has secured his rightful place within the pantheon of substantive filmmakers as well as appreciative, if selective, audiences throughout his career. His work often focuses on the struggle within the main characters to find some solace in perilous worlds bent on crushing the spirit, where the key to salvation, however tempered by horrific circumstances, resides in the individual imagination because it does not exist in the real world. Gilliam presents this salvation often in terms of an escape, however brief, from a mindless state-sponsored bureaucracy that threatens creativity, innovation and original thought. It is with Brazil (1985) that Gilliam presents for many viewers his most compelling exploration of this theme.
The film almost never made it into the theatres, however, and the battle for its release in many ways reflected an ironic interplay of these same issues. The impasse between Gilliam and Universal Studios over the release of the film has been well documented by Jack Mathews.1 In brief, studio executives considered the film overly depressing, especially its ending, which they determined to be completely unacceptable (read: unmarketable). Perhaps they responded to the standard assumption that films with overtly happy endings are more appreciated at the box office than movies with depressing conclusions. That is not complicated or surprising. However, their effort to piecemeal a version of the film that would achieve their financial expectations is instructive, since it also unwittingly reveals overarching societal beliefs regarding romantic love and (un-)happiness. Universal Studios President Sid Sheinberg claimed that his studio ‘wasn’t so much interested in a happy ending as a “satisfying ending”’ and that, because of Gilliam’s ending, its commercial potential was ‘something close to zero’ (Lyman 2004: 28).
Universal created different conclusions to the film, but Gilliam did not like any of them because a ‘satisfying ending’, as implicitly defined by Sheinberg, was simply incongruous with the rest of the film. Gilliam lamented that studio executives such as Sheinberg are ‘businessmen who have risen to the top because they are very good businessmen, but when they find themselves running a movie studio, they suddenly want to be filmmakers. They think they are filmmakers. But you know what? They’re not’ (Lyman 2004: 29). From the legal battle came a bowdlerised film Brazil (what has been deemed the ‘Love Conquers All’ version) that provides a clear and happy ending which follows conventional Hollywood patterns. Our heroes survive, a happy couple, with a happy future implied. Love, indeed, conquers all, even totalitarian societies.2 Fortunately, this version survives only as a curiosity for avid fans of Gilliam’s art. Although no one needs to argue against this silly insult to Gilliam’s work, since its invalidity is self-evident, the cultural desire for the triumph of romantic love that the version represents, however, can provide a springboard from which to view Brazil proper. Gilliam’s masterpiece is a different kind of love story, one tied not so much to romance but to humanism.
The desire of studio executives to conform to the notion that successful films must have happy endings, however unrealistic and unaesthetic that may be, correlates well with Gilliam’s conception of office administrators who adhere blindly to bureaucratic regulations. In a 1995 interview with Paul Wardle, Gilliam expressed concern over the inconsistency in the studio executives’ proposed alternative endings to Brazil: their ‘ending was appalling! You create an android, and tell the viewer that they all have limited life spans, and then at the end, it’s, “Oh, but this is one that doesn’t.” That’s the kind of thing that drives me crazy. Let’s at least be consistent or true to the piece’ (2004: 91). Gilliam, in stark contrast to studio executives, offers an ending that is indeed ‘true to the piece’, and its validity resides in the mind of our reluctant hero.
Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a highly competent though complacent bureaucrat, sheds his waking identity to become the heroic saviour of a damsel in distress. The excitement of his dreams provides sharp contrast to the mediocrity of his daily life: ‘In his fantasy world, he is a heroic figure who rescues his dream girl from nightmarish creatures, derivative of and corresponding to the intrusive social system in which he lives’ (Rosen 2008: 78). Lowry’s imagination in the beginning resides wholly in a chivalric dreamscape wherein he is a knight errant battling with an ever-present dragon – or, as he creates it, a giant metallic samurai warrior. As opposed to being evidence of an active imagination, Lowry’s dream woman, more accurately, is simply evidence of his self-absorption born of loneliness, boredom and apathy. Viewers should note that his dreams are not harmless escapism; rather, they allow him to remain guilty of disengagement from the workaday world and to ignore his complicity with its horrors.
Lowry’s flights of fancy, while seemingly metaphorical moments of escape and lightness, actually weigh him down by continuing his delusion of meaningful participation in the human race. The totalitarian system dehumanises him by denying him aspirations for autonomy or self-determination; his dreams ironically perform a similar function and equally deny Lowry his humanity. He seems to be under the impression that his dreams are his own (though he does deny to his mother that he has any at all). He clearly sees his flight fancies as separate from the drudgery of ‘Brazilian life’; he is wrong, for they serve as part of the mechanism that keeps him passive and submissive. On their surface, Lowry’s daydreams, defined first via heroic flights through the clouds, would seem to be clear evocations of his true self, a man driven to a sublimated rebellion against the overbearing and tedious weight of life in a totalitarian society. While these can be regarded as metaphorical moments of lightness, these dreams perhaps more accurately should be viewed as self-defeating in that they appease his psyche’s need for such escape while doing nothing to challenge the complacency of his waking self.
In the opening minutes of the film, audiences witness a bumbling everyman who nonetheless has dramatic subconscious delusions of himself as capable of soaring above his mundane world. The waking Lowry, however, indicates no real capacity or inclination to rebel. His dreams do not intrude upon his waking life, or the real world of Brazil, beyond making him somewhat distracted. He remains a functional cog in the machine. His flights are more romantic versions of the old films, like Casablanca (1942) that his co-workers watch at every possible moment, enjoying their own brief moments of escape. They all, however, simply fulfill the ultimate goal of the state. In one of the many propaganda posters that litter the city, an image of a storm trooper is complemented with a simple message: ‘They work so we may dream.’3 In this sense, Lowry’s romantic dreams, quite simply, serve the state, which encourages dreams of a passive nature as an opiate and thereby benefits from the lie that such dreams promote happiness and general well-being.
More importantly for his salvation, however, is that his waking life begins to intrude upon his dreams. As we hope to show, both his growing sense of guilt and his growing selflessness gain influence over his subconscious. It is this transformation that is crucial to assessing fully the conclusion of the film and Lowry’s final utopian dream. Fredric Jameson has argued that the modern difficulty of envisioning, much less achieving a utopian world derives not from any ‘individual failure of imagination’; rather, the failure comes from the ‘systematic, cultural, and ideological closure’ of industrial society that imprisons us all (1982: 153).4 With this context in mind, we should consider that the awakening of Sam Lowry is an extraordinary act of human will, but it is an act made possible by his altruistic interactions with Jill Layton (Kim Greist) – encounters that enable him to rebel against the totalitarian society that attempts to dehumanise them both.
‘They work so we may dream.’
The process of pursuing Jill Layton offers him the opportunity to think and act in a more selfless manner, as he tries to save her life. It forces awareness of a world beyond his childish ego and outside of state-sanctioned dreaming. Of course, there are two Jill Laytons. Fred Glass observes that Lowry’s ‘dream woman also actually exists, as her own person, and as someone who is quite different – active, capable, thoughtful – than he has fantasized’ (1986: 24). We should clarify that a dream woman cannot be a real woman, even when both are played by the same actress. The key is that Lowry makes this connection immediately and absolutely. As the childlike romantic, Lowry believes, or assumes, that she is his dream woman made flesh in his waking reality. This is a fortunate coincidence for Lowry’s salvation. The fact that beyond her superficial appearance Layton bears no resemblance to his dream woman is vitally important, however. He seeks her merely for her beauty, and he persists despite her clear antagonism for him and for the dehumanising bureaucratic establishment he represents. His persistence, which is not necessarily a sign of strength of character but more one of desperation and self-absorption, nonetheless allows him to learn from her. The chase – Lowry’s quest – provides him a picaresque tour of his world, and he learns much in the process. He is, in the end, able to incorporate her otherness into his own sense of self, or, more accurately, he joins her, which transforms his selfhood altogether into a compassionate human being. Herein rests the true potential for affirmation of human feeling revealed in Brazil.
Before addressing Lowry’s quest, we must consider his world – an authoritarian nightmare that in every way discourages human aspiration beyond the desire for comfort and commodities. Brazil could represent society in any twentieth-century Western culture, or as Gilliam puts it, ‘the Los Angeles/Belfast border’ (Christie & Gilliam 2000: 129). The society he creates (or reflects) is awkwardly caught in a technological age in which machines and bureaucracies quash human compassion and self-identity. Gilliam asserts that there is ‘a price to pay for all of these Central Services, for the world we have … By taking part in that process, the price you pay is a more complicated society, and one you’re dependent on’ (Gleiberman 2004: 32). The dehumanising effect of this reliance upon machines is most evident in the absence of altruism or even basic caring for others. The dearth of such human feeling becomes all the more apparent with Gilliam’s choice to set the film during Christmas time. Viewers may even wonder if the world of the film is in a perpetual season of giving, wherein citizens are encouraged to perform – over and over again – the act of giving but with no capacity for, or expectation of, genuine joy that such acts of kindness could provide. One gets the impression that Christmas is a year-round opiate to allow the performance of human interaction via the exchanging of gifts, while everyone remains distant and isolated. There is no pleasure in either giving or receiving; rather, each exchange of gifts is perfunctory, a symbolic act of community rendered virtually meaningless. The sacred promise of technology – that it will make humans comfortable and happy – remains unfulfilled.
Added to this malaise is the constant threat of random violence. Daily terrorist bombings have continued for thirteen years, so no one, even those in close proximity to the explosions, seems to care or even notice them anymore as long as they are not directly affected. Gilliam comments that because Brazil shows that in ‘a terrorized society, and whatever that terror is, whether it’s terrorists or just the complexity of a system that just blows up in your face the whole time, the best way to survive it is just staying in your own little cubby hole’ (Morgan 2004: 56). Gilliam makes a vital point here in that both terrorism and governmental control work to keep citizens fearful and isolated as seemingly solitary victims of circumstances beyond their comprehension. The director suggests that governments control citizens through bureaucratic numbness and fear. As a result, even if citizens imprisoned in such a world of random violence chafe against circumstance, they lack the capacity to imagine an alternative, much less fight for one. So they conform. As Jameson asserts, ‘it is practical thinking which everywhere represents a capitulation to the system itself, and stands as a testimony to the power of that system to transform even its adversaries into its own mirror image’ (1971: 111). As a result, citizens reflect the will of the state and become isolated and disinterested, even cold. When bombs explode, people react apathetically, as if they are machines within the system. The lives and identities of the victims are meaningless. The silence of the survivors is the voice of complicity.
Sam Lowry acts likewise. Bob McCabe observes that Lowry is ‘the guilty party’ and enjoys ‘all the privileges through his father and other’s connections. He’s bright so he should be taking responsibility in that organization, but he shuns responsibility. He lives in his little fantasy world’ (1999: 126). Early in the film, when he makes a show of helping others, he does so merely in order to make himself feel good and to assuage his guilt, as in the scene involving Mrs Buttle. Indeed, his offer to deliver the refund check personally derives simply from a desire to get out of the office and to clear up some paperwork. He indicates no substantive interest in the fact that his action could be helpful to the family. In reference to this scene, Gilliam remarks, ‘Sam thinks he’s a good Boy Scout; it’s Christmas time, so he’s doing his best for everybody by taking his chance. Normally, you wouldn’t do that in the system, but he thought this was a great humane gesture, without understanding what he was doing’ (Christie & Gilliam 2000: 144). The intensity of Mrs Buttle’s grief and the violent attack by her son stun Lowry. He has no concept of the lives of the Buttles or anyone in the city at all. His only response to her question, ‘what have you done with his body!?’ is to deny responsibility and to assert his magnanimity in bringing her the check in the first place.
This vital moment introduces Lowry to the ‘reality’ of his world while also demonstrating his disengagement from it. Even as he is knocked to the floor, he catches a glimpse of Layton in the broken mirror and takes off after her, leaving the Buttle family to its tears without further thought. After failing to catch up with her, he learns her name – Jill Layton – from a little girl who says that she is waiting for her father to come home. Walking away, he realises that the girl must be Buttle’s daughter. His dream woman via Jill Layton is now inextricably tied to the Buttle tragedy. Throughout the film, Gilliam demonstrates that love and liberty are virtually impossible in this post-capitalistic existence, but he also suggests – through the intertwining of the Buttle family, Tuttle, Layton and Lowry – that human interconnectedness remains, however sublimated by the system.
Lowry’s dreams begin to show a progression driven by the guilt of this connection. Obstructions or challenges increasingly appear in successive dreams, and they derive in mutated form from the events of his waking life that increasingly burdens him. The guilt is shown primarily through his imagined construction of Mrs Buttle whose repeated demand, ‘what have you done with his body?’ serves as a steady drumbeat in his increasingly worried mind. These images, in addition to his relationship with Jill Layton, incite him to change and become more caring, selfless and humane – hence his benevolent behaviour alongside Layton in the department store, where they tend compassionately to the victims of the bombing, a sincere act of human kindness. This essential scene is brief but compelling nonetheless. Although the action of their relationship centres on his manic and often comic attempts to win her trust, the underlying significance resides not in the romantic quest but Lowry’s developing identity in response to life outside of his normal routine.
Whereas his dream woman is separated from reality, Jill Layton is wholly enmeshed with it. His chance sightings of her – in the Ministry of Information and at the Buttle home – occur only because she is demonstrating concern for her neighbours, keeping their welfare in the front of her consciousness. This impulse for human kindness intrudes itself upon Lowry’s self-identity as he pursues her. The bombing scene in the department store provides a clear indication of this subtle but crucial shift. The only people who tend to the wounded are Lowry and Layton, who, because of their altruism, are subsequently accosted by stormtroopers. They are arrested even though the package she carries is still intact after the bombing and is thus obviously not the source of the explosion. Lowry’s caring is genuine, though we should note that he acts in direct response to Layton’s command: ‘Make yourself useful.’ Gilliam suggests here that those who care enough to help threaten a society that works so comprehensively to dehumanise its citizens under the guise of law and order. This is an important implication. To take any interest in the well-being of fellow citizens is at best suspicious and, by extension, inherently a form of subversion. The two become suspects simply for displaying human kindness.
Layton’s troubles, however, are much deeper. Because of her efforts to help the Buttle family, she has been included on the list of dangerous terrorist subjects provided to Jack Lint (Michael Palin), the Information Retrieval specialist who tortures Buttle. By seeking formal redress about the mistreatment of the innocent man, Layton has revealed herself as compassionate and, unlike Lowry, not a passive dreamer. Viewers witness her core personality from the beginning, and her anti-establishment nature is revealed at every moment; her isolation from society seems to have preserved her identity. Even her choice of entertainment carries significance.
Her appreciation of the Marx Brothers is not incidental. Gilliam establishes a connection between Layton and the Marx Brothers when she lies in her bathtub watching The Cocoanuts (1929) as government foot-soldiers come to arrest Buttle. She is clearly enjoying the anarchic humour of the comedy team until she is interrupted by the capture of Buttle. The Marx Brothers were notorious for making movies that satirise all political and cultural power structures and established hierarchies. Though the images from The Cocoanuts appear briefly, Gilliam is clearly interested in the Marx Brothers as a symbol of the inversion of social order, including references to the comedy team in other films, such as Twelve Monkeys (1995) when the members of the asylum watch Monkey Business (1931). Layton’s taste in comedy is not incidental by any means, and it complements the reasons why Layton stands out in her society. She cares about others and complains about the bureaucracy; she is thus labeled any enemy of the state.
In the world of Brazil, the word of an innocent citizen means nothing compared to the black type on a white form. To the government bureaucrats, forms never lie. When Jill Layton goes to government desks, which tower above her and other citizens in a spatial display of hegemony – literally as well as metaphorically placing bureaucracy on a pedestal – she is unceremoniously dispatched from one office to another in vain, unsuccessful in her attempt to help the Buttles. She is not allowed to save the life of this innocent man because she lacks the appropriate form (or the appropriate stamp for the form), and each apathetic bureaucrat sends her to another one in her fruitless effort to secure the proper documents. Glass notes that ‘Jill sees through the machinations of the state bureaucracy and the myriad ideological systems it utilizes because she cares – without becoming maudlin – about human beings and her empathy puts her into direct conflict with the worldview and practices of nearly everyone around her’ (1986: 27). The totalitarian bureaucracy allows no room for caring, individualistic human beings, so for Layton these qualities prove fatal. Layton’s altruism and willingness to challenge the bureaucratic hegemony renders her dangerously human, for it manifests her desire to make her own decisions; her choices give her a true individual identity, which makes her a subversive force. The moral point, though, is that her individuality exists in context with others.
Part of the lack of humanity depicted in Brazil derives from the lack of choice – or what Lawrence Langer refers to as ‘choiceless choices, where the only alternatives are between two indignities’ (1980: 55). For instance, Lowry can marry, but he is pressured to acquiesce to the woman selected by his mother, Ida, and Ida’s best friend, Mrs Terrain. Naturally, they select the best friend’s daughter, Shirley, even though the two ‘lovebirds’ are clearly incompatible. The two are thrown together by their overbearing mothers without their consent or input. Just as he must blindly obey authority in his bureaucratic world, Lowry is pressured by his mother to marry against his will. It is noteworthy, then, that when Lowry rebels against his mother, he does so by finding his own woman, Layton, ultimately consummating their relationship in Ida Lowry’s bed. The sexual liaison between Lowry and Layton on his mother’s bed serves as a blatant rebellion against dictatorial authority.
Furthermore, Ida Lowry secures a nepotism-based promotion to Information Retrieval for her son, even though he does not want it and it is without his permission. Likewise, Kurtzmann rejects Lowry’s promotion for him, also without his permission. Gilliam, therefore, presents a society in which people lack autonomy because all decisions are made for them, as if they are too ignorant to decide anything for themselves, or perhaps more accurately, in fear that citizens may actually exercise autonomy and challenge the will of the state. Gilliam observes that the office workers in Information Retrieval are ‘doing whatever the boss demands of them, they’re evil in the sense that they’re not taking the responsibility for their own actions, they’re just desperate to please whoever it is that is in power’ (Klawans 2004: 154). Government workers and, by extension, citizens at large thus become automatons who mindlessly fill out forms, follow orders, and accept decisions made for them.
Brazil demonstrates the power of the state to stifle or blunt imagination by erasing self-identity. Those in control of the system dehumanise the citizenry through excessive use of – and obsession with – numbers and forms, all of which serve as signifiers of a bureaucracy of total control. After his promotion, Lowry becomes DZ/015. The letters and numbers replace his identity and demonstrate that he has become one of the nameless followers who desperately walk behind the boss, Mr Warrenn (Ian Richardson). The code DZ/015 substitutes for – or supplants – his identity, just as Holocaust victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau had numbers inscribed onto their arms or Americans are followed everywhere, even to their deaths, by their social security number. Lowry’s new identity, DZ/015, resembles 27B/6 (the designation for a government form related to heating and cooling systems work orders): both consist of a seemingly random combination of letters and numbers. Lowry’s identity is thus no different from that of a bureaucratic form. In fact, Warrenn welcomes him by saying, ‘Congratulations, DZ/015. Welcome to the team.’ Yet it is hardly a team because no one cares or works with each other. All workers are sequestered in small offices more similar to prisoners in cells than humans with any spirit of cooperation or commonality. Harvey Lime (Charles McKeown), who occupies the adjacent office and a similar letter/number code, struggles to seize more of the desk that he shares with Lowry, as it is wrenched through the wall by first Lowry and then Lime in an endless contest. Workers are left to engage in petty battles for extra inches of desk space, seemingly oblivious to the inherent loss of dignity and purpose. David Morgan notes, ‘modern life is designed to separate us much more than it used to; it’s not the village any more. We all have our little boxes we live in’ (2004: 56). Lowry is being swallowed up by the bureaucratic government established initially to maintain order, yet that now exists to ensure that people live not as vibrant human beings but as lifeless automatons in a world defined by ‘the commodification of all social relationships’ (Glass 1986: 22).
Jill Layton and Harry Tuttle, though acting as individuals and apparently in no direct connection to others, stand apart. They are loners, but they act ultimately for a common good. Layton shows clear concern for her neighbours and acts on their behalf. Tuttle also acts for the benefit of others simply by insisting on doing quality work – a rare thing in Gilliam’s ‘Brazilian world.’ Tuttle is a true craftsman and, according to Gilliam, is one of those rare individuals ‘who make things work’ (Gleiberman 2004: 32). Tuttle, an artisan, is clearly motivated by the challenge of the work itself, but his efforts nonetheless help others. Any enjoyment he garners from the work does not undermine the core altruism of his actions. He refuses to be reduced to a number and thus provides another valuable model for Lowry’s awakening. Though both Layton and Tuttle are loners, they are not isolationists. Their actions move outward, not inward, and they are, as a result, intricately connected to both the Buttle tragedy and Lowry’s development.
The ‘Love Conquers All’ version of Brazil is unintentionally ironic, for it implies unrealistically that love wins out over authority, the state and oppression. Implicit in this dishonest version is that love – romantic love – is the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. Therein rests the deeper horror of the version. The idea of using the ‘love conquers all’ conceit as a model for a revision of Brazil clearly distorts the struggles within the film itself, turning a ‘sad’ ending into a ‘happy’ one. But such a view of the film also undermines the more nuanced triumph of the human spirit found in Gilliam’s masterpiece: the triumph of shared humanity, a different kind of love story. Gilliam’s film, in its proper directorial form, demonstrates the ultimate transformative power of cooperative community spirit, and is not ultimately a celebration of the individual. Of course, interpreting the film in this manner must inevitably prove less rewarding for those viewers (and studio heads) who desire unadulterated joy. However, it provides, nonetheless, its own inspiration for those viewers who hope for some substantive resistance to totalitarianism. Cooperation among oppressed, apathetic and distrustful human beings – emotionally and morally crippled spirits created by a dysfunctional totalitarian social system – is in itself a victory for humanity. This victory becomes even more poignant when we consider that Lowry has been indoctrinated into the mind-numbing bureaucratic routine for many years.
Initially, Gilliam envisioned a young man in his early twenties, not Jonathan Pryce, a middle-aged actor, to play the role of Sam Lowry. Gilliam decided to adapt to the casting of Pryce, a fortunate decision for the moral movement of the film. The director remarked that as an older man, Lowry
is guiltier, he deserves the final punishment far more than if he’d been a 21-year-old kid; he’s somebody who has avoided responsibility, who has failed to make the most of himself in life. These things actually add to the character. (Christie & Gilliam 2000: 115)
The casting of a middle-aged man in the lead role deepens Lowry’s complicity. Because he has been part of the dehumanising bureaucracy for decades, he is highly invested in the system, no matter his level of ambition professionally. He would find any awakening of moral responsibility rather challenging, to say the least. Lowry’s incomplete nature, even though he is a middle-aged man, renders his tragic fall from grace as an ideal citizen of the state more stunning to the status quo. When Lowry and Layton join, as Gilliam puts it ‘to make a full human being’, they represent not a loving couple of misfits (typical of more standard Hollywood romances) but a shock to the system. With Lowry’s struggle against the powerful state a catastrophic failure, the concept of a happy romantic ending is absurd and, worse, beside the point.
Lowry’s tragic dive into madness is tempered by his efforts to establish bonds with those outside of his social caste structure, a decidedly unromantic narrative arc. Yes, his efforts are inept and frequently clueless – he is a man-child – but they are increasingly sincere and move beyond adolescent whimsy and self-absorption, and they develop into a legitimate human desire for interconnectedness. Lowry moves outside of his socially determined place of isolation and complacency. The initial catalyst for his movement is romantic, chivalric love, but the effort moves well beyond that rather narrow movement. Lowry – whether intentionally or not – becomes a force for social rebellion as he becomes aware of a broader community of resistance – via Layton and Tuttle. True, his ultimate madness leaves the state intact – this point is unequivocal – but his dream vision implies the removal of oppression for all.
Lowry’s final dream concludes with a pastoral vision of shared experience and is in no way a continuation of heroic flights of fancy definitive of his early dreams. Moreover, throughout the long sequence that begins in the massive torture chamber, he no longer creates a world wherein he fights to save a weak, caged, subordinate female. On the contrary, although he participates in the violence of the escape, the entire dream is defined by his increasingly desperate efforts to evade capture. Most importantly, he accepts a wholly passive role in the last stage of the escape; this is not resignation. Rather, it marks significant emotional growth. Lowry becomes a mature human being fully embracing a communal spirit. The first part of the dream is defined by male violence led by Tuttle, but the images nonetheless exhibit cooperative effort to destroy the totalitarian state. This part of the dream, albeit satisfying emotionally as the Ministry of Information is destroyed, offers no real solution. It is only when his dream returns to Layton that Lowry develops a purposeful, truly inspired narrative vision.
His dream in its concluding sequence celebrates not violence, not adventure, not ego, but life. The final dream becomes possible only within a mind transformed, a mind and heart at peace and within a cocoon of shared human desire and experience, a mind in love with the endless hope of humanity. We must understand that Lowry, as the man we see in the early parts of the film, could in no way have imagined the final sequence. At the film’s conclusion, he is not the same adolescent dreamer of the earlier dreams of flight. Awakened to the needs of others, Lowry creates a willful rejection of the authority that has always separated him from Layton – not as lovers but as fellow human beings. His dream speaks from the collective unconscious and symbolically asserts that, indeed, we are all in it together. Lowry and Layton, together, have successfully thwarted a corrupt society simply by being together in their hearts and minds. Subversion need not be any more complicated than that.
However, Lowry’s final dream sequence pushes the subversion further. He creates a symbolic way for the disaffected to recapture their individual and collective human spirits, and those spirits remain intact despite the horror of the core fact that at the end of the film the state remains in control of the society at large. This assertion does not ignore the terror that our hero has been put through by the Ministry of Information during his incarceration. The cruelty of the impending torture itself, as revealed by the perverse display of tools on the table next to Lowry, demonstrates both the power of the state and the void created by the utter lack of human compassion. Although Lint is Lowry’s long-time friend, he is most concerned with the embarrassment caused by his relationship with Lowry, even as he prepares to use surgical instruments and power tools to torture his friend.5 Lowry’s torture – and most certainly he is tortured, as the wound on his hand shows – does not appear on screen. His increasing insanity is awful and heartbreaking. This awareness, however, should not blind viewers to the other part of this complex exchange: Gilliam’s film ends with Lowry at peace.
He is free, not because of insanity but because of his subversive imagination. As revealed by the final image, his dream – just before Lint and Helpmann reappear – is coherent and complete and made possible by the processes of an inwardly rational mind. The image itself provides evidence for rationality. It stands in sharp relief from the manic movement and violent chaos that dominates the preceding sequences of the final dream. It is calm and complete, a still life of peace in the valley. Moreover, Lowry, when we last see him, is in no pain. The government agents of torture – Lint and Helpmann – are fully aware that they have failed to achieve their purpose. Lowry has clearly made no admission of guilt that satisfies them. In fact, Lowry’s last sane words are wholly focused on asserting his innocence. His claims are desperate, indeed, as he tries to convince Lint to be merciful, but we should also consider that he now also believes in the concept of such innocence and the validity of his own assertion. And he believes this in spite of his full awareness of the subversive acts that he has committed with Layton and the perverse accuracy of the charges made against him by the Ministry. Lowry, indeed, for the first time in the film, is truly innocent of complicity with the dehumanising effects of the regime.
Lowry’s final dream nullifies the entire previously displayed cultural vision of the Brazilian world. As discussed above, Jameson has provided perhaps the most sustained theoretical consideration of the utopian ideal and the difficulty of forging an alternate reality in a postmodern world. He has pointed out how in early industrial society the utopian concept diverged into ‘idle wish fulfillments and imaginary satisfactions’. According to Jameson, postmodern explorations of the utopian ideal, while pretending to create a practical response to totalitarian state power, nonetheless have often fallen into lock-step with the system itself. Jameson goes on to make the crucial point that can apply to Gilliam’s Brazil: ‘The Utopian idea … keeps alive the possibility of a world qualitatively distinct from this one and takes the form of a stubborn negation of all that is’ (1971: 111). Lowry’s early dreams, his flights of fancy, simply encourage childlike escapism and represent no threat to the status quo with respect to both imaginative and practical thinking. Indeed, his early dreams support the state in that this harmless dreaming sustains him while he works in the real world at maintaining the status quo. His dream sequence, however, represents what Jameson calls for: ‘a stubborn negation of all that is’.
Lint and Helpmann, as leading representatives of the system, see only Lowry’s insanity, but they are not privy to his imagination and cannot recognise the potential of his vision that asserts a distinct world apart from theirs. Since audiences, on the other hand, are aware of that vision, we should not accept or participate in their complacency and dismiss his smile as invalid or unearned by a rational mind. They do not grasp that Lowry’s happiness in the end lies within his consciousness, a powerful force that has created a subversive dream of autonomy. Lowry’s vision is astounding. He jumps back into an agrarian ideal that prefigures industrial, postmodern and post-capitalist dystopias. Lowry’s vision is in no way a plan or fully engaged statement of an alternative social order complete with a subsequent strategy for implementation; rather, it is a flash of awareness that an alternate world can be imagined – or remembered. This may not be a realisation that can save Lowry, but it certainly implies that he can see it as a worldview. He can imagine freedom, and that means others can, too.
Fully aware of the controversial ending of Brazil, Gilliam remarked, ‘I always thought the ending was chilling, but then it bursts out musically and suddenly it’s wonderful – wonderful in the context of all the possibilities open to our boy – at least he’s free in his mind’ (Christie & Gilliam 1999: 147). Despite the tragedy, Gilliam is justified in using the term ‘wonderful’, because Lowry shows that hope exists for the human spirit through the interconnection of people who actively seek meaningful lives. He has developed the capacity to dream a human memory of freedom even though everything in his culture has conspired to deny him the capacity to do such an audacious thing. He imagines a life beyond the urban nightmare, beyond the billboard walls lining the highways, and beyond a blasted, apocalyptic landscape. Lowry’s triumphant dream – in contrast to the ones born of flight and escapism – is a vision of life on the ground, a life in its pastoral ideal that would be tied wholly to the earth, never flying above it in egomaniacal fantasies or hidden behind the cold metal and plastic of technology, a life that would prove difficult but always shared. When the landscape/still-life image concluding the dream sequence is torn asunder by the reappearance of Lint and Helpmann, we are shocked back into the reality of Brazil’s totalitarian world. However, Lowry is not; he is with Jill Layton – his Eve – in a new world of their making. Lint notes: ‘He’s gotten away from us.’ This is true, and that is a happy ending.
Notes
1 For a full accounting of the controversy, see Mathews (1998). The book also contains the full director’s cut screenplay.
2 This version is available in the Criterion Collection release of Brazil.
3 This particular poster appears as Lowry walks away from his destroyed car after visiting the Buttle apartment.
4 Jameson’s essay is built around his assessment of the character of contemporary science fiction as a medium for utopian explorations. For an excellent discussion of Jameson’s utopian thinking, see Fitting (1998).
5 For a compelling discussion of how Gilliam demonstrates the power of the state and the justifications for the use of torture regarding the post-9/11 war in Iraq, see Price (2010).
Works Cited
Christie, Ian and Terry Gilliam (2000) Gilliam on Gilliam. London. Faber.
Fitting, Peter (1998) ‘The Concept of Utopia in the Work of Fredric Jameson’, Utopian Studies, 9, 2, 8–17.
Glass, Fred (1986) ‘Brazil’, Film Quarterly, 39, 4, 22–8.
Gleiberman, Owen (2004) ‘The Life of Terry’, in David Sterritt and Lucille Rhodes (eds) Terry Gilliam: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 30–5.
Jameson, Fredric (1971) Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
——(1982) ‘Progress Versus Utopia; Or, Can We Imagine the Future?’, Science Fiction Studies, 9, 2, 147–58.
Klawans, Stuart (2004) ‘A Dialogue with Terry Gilliam’, in David Sterritt and Lucille Rhodes (eds) Terry Gilliam: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 141–69.
Langer, Lawrence (1980) ‘The Dilemma of Choice in the Death Camps’, Centerpoint: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 4, 1, 53–9.
Lyman, Rick (2004) ‘Zany Guy Has Serious Rave Movie’, in David Sterritt and Lucille Rhodes (eds) Terry Gilliam: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 26–9.
Mathews, Jack (1998) The Battle of Brazil: Terry Gilliam v Universal Studies. New York: Applause.
McCabe, Bob (1999) Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam. New York: Universe.
Morgan, David (2004) ‘Gilliam, Gothan, God’, David Sterritt and Lucille Rhodes (eds) Terry Gilliam: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 52–64.
Price, David (2010) ‘Governing Fear in the Iron Cage of Rationalism: Terry Gilliam’s Brazil through the 9/11 Looking Glass’, in Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula and Karen Randell (eds) Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture, and the ‘War on Terror’. New York: Continuum, 167–82.
Rosen, Elizabeth (2008) Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Sterritt David and Lucille Rhodes (2004) Terry Gilliam: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.
Wardle, Paul (2004) ‘Terry Gilliam’, in Sterritt David and Lucille Rhodes (eds) Terry Gilliam: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 65–105.
