When I saw the trailers for Wall-E earlier this year (and last year) I couldn’t help but think “man.. I’ve heard that catchy little song before… but where?!” And I also thought it just somehow didn’t sound right for a movie on a desolate planet in the future… like it needed a lot of people buzzing about or something.
Well, Byron was kind enough to lend me a copy of Brazil to take with me… I knew I’d seen maybe 40% of the film and never got to finish it. As I watched it… I heard that song! Pixar took the song straight from the mail-room scene in Brazil!
well, you remembered a lot after ten years! I just watched it Wednesday night. I noticed all the things you saw. Perhaps I only discount it so much because we’ve had so many movies making the same comments lately.
movies like V for Vendetta kind of turned me off to social commentary in film unless the film is an actual documentary.
I think there were several threads that were social commentaries. There was the one about the paperwork and needing approval for any little thing. The need to get repairs but having to have those repairs approved by the system and taking a long time to fix, the mix-up of Mr. Tuttle and Mr. Buttle, and “information retrieval” are all reminiscent of a dominant, former world power.
DeNiro’s character as the repairman shows what happens in a society that socializes everything. Eventually you have people who start doing it themselves because they are sick of waitng around for someone to help them out. Then when the government outlaws self-help, the people become criminals for trying to fix their own problems in a timely manner themselves. The government wanted the system to be that way because it gave the government absolute power. To try to accomplish things on your own, outside of the control of the government was illegal and constituted arrest. And if you remember from the film, anyone who was arrested and taken to information retrieval, didn’t come back. That was also reminiscent of a certain former world power.
Those were small threads and ideas throughout the film. The main idea was he who controls the information, has the power.
Now of course, they present those ideas in some strange ways and it almost comes off as a farce. The dreams of Sam could be interpreted as his own desires to break free of the system that he helps support as one of its managing employees.
That’s all I could remember from watching it. I haven’t seen it in about ten years.
it sort of meandered around a little bit too much for me. The point got lost (was there one?).
Brazil is a fabulous social commentary. It’s one of my favorite movies.
The only thing I didn’t like was that it was fairly violent at times. Compared to most movies, I suppose Brazil is rather tame. Still, I don’t really enjoy violence in movies.