In this episode of the Radical Liberation Podcast, I'm joined by Stephen Carson, host of the radical leftist podcast Radical Liberation, to discuss Terry Gilliam's 1984 film, "Brazil." We discuss the themes of the film, the director's style, and what makes this film so unique.
00:00:47.800But one of the ones that I think gets passed over because it was a little bit quirkier,
00:00:51.900is kind of more of a comedy, a little more British, is Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
00:00:57.280And I think it's an amazing movie because it doesn't just give us a dystopian future.
00:01:02.620It specifically looks at the bureaucratic aspect of what would happen.
00:01:07.880It predicts much of the kind of bureaucratic malaise and the terrible, quiet desperation that many people feel when they're trapped in the kind of world that we have today.
00:01:18.000And so coming on to discuss that great film with me is Stephen Carson.
00:01:22.380He's the host of the Radical Liberation podcast.
00:01:54.180You feel like there's very little escape.
00:01:57.220And Terry Gilliam is a director who's very visually gifted.
00:02:00.460The story of this film is not particularly complicated, but the events, the way they're depicted, very much capture the essence of that experience.
00:02:11.280I know you're a big fan of the director, so I want to go ahead and dive into his general style and then the specifics of what makes this movie so great.
00:02:19.640But before we do that, guys, let me tell you a little bit about ISI.
00:02:23.600Universities today aren't just neglecting real education.
00:02:26.520They're actively undermining it, and we can't let them get away with it.
00:02:29.400America was made for an educated and engaged citizenry.
00:02:33.120The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is here to help.
00:02:35.920ISI offers programs and opportunities for conservative students across the country.
00:02:41.100ISI understands that conservatives and right-of-center students feel isolated on college campuses and that you're often fighting for your own reputation, dignity, and future.
00:02:51.080Through ISI, you can learn about what Russell Kirk called the permanent things,
00:02:54.860the philosophical and political teachings that shaped and made Western civilization great.
00:03:00.320ISI offers many opportunities to jumpstart your career.
00:03:03.320They have fellowships at some of the nation's top conservative publications like National Review, the American Conservative, and the College Thinker.
00:03:10.380If you're a graduate student, ISI offers funding opportunities to sponsor the next great generation of college professors.
00:03:15.840Through ISI, you can work with conservative thinkers who are making a difference, thinkers like Chris Ruffo, who currently has an ISI researcher helping him with his book.
00:03:25.300But perhaps most importantly, ISI offers college students a community of people that can help them grow.
00:03:30.360If you're a college student, ISI can help you start a student organization, or a student newspaper, or meet other like-minded students at their various conferences and events.
00:03:40.220ISI is here to educate the next generation of great Americans.
00:03:48.460All right, so before we dive into Brazil itself, let's talk a little bit about its director, because I think Terry Gilliam is a guy who has a very specific style.
00:04:30.640Probably Twelve Monkeys is the other big commercially successful one most people would be familiar with.
00:04:35.540But he feels like the kind of guy that, you know, he kind of goes into hiding for five years and then emerges to make a weird movie and then goes back underground if he sees his shadow.
00:04:46.340So can you talk a little bit about Gilliam and his kind of movie and directing style?
00:04:52.200Yeah, so Gilliam was part of the Monty Python crew, those guys.
00:04:58.900And he was involved with some of their films, right?
00:05:02.220Like Monty Python, The Holy Grail, Life of Brian, Meaning of Life.
00:05:05.740He directed at least two of them, I think.
00:05:10.580And Time Bandits, I view, is sort of transitional.
00:07:38.820He's out of the box in his dreams, right?
00:07:41.260Yeah, he looks like Ziggy Stardust with giant angel wings flying around, right?
00:07:45.520Like it's a radically, it's radically juxtaposed to his existence as, like you said, this cog in the machine of this giant bureaucratic state.
00:07:55.280And that definitely shows, again, I think it very much captures that quiet desperation that a lot of people feel when they're stuck in corporate jobs.
00:08:04.620I mean, The Matrix does this in a way, obviously.
00:08:08.520It's famous for breaking you out of The Matrix and Neo's in this, you know, very boring office job doing this coding or whatever.
00:08:16.140But Brazil does it in, again, a far more fantastic way.
00:08:20.180It feels almost like a Dio album or, you know, some kind of power metal album art as he's flying around trying to free the princess from these, you know, from these evil people and everything.
00:08:31.720It definitely evokes a much different spirit.
00:09:21.120Like the hilarious thing about the duct work is it's this industrial grade.
00:09:25.620It's very ugly and it's strewn through everything.
00:09:27.860So even when you're in fancy restaurants, like we get a scene where he's supposed to be eating in this fancy restaurant with his mother and everything.
00:09:35.620There's still this duct work just coming out of the bottom of what is supposed to be these fancy tables and strewn throughout everywhere.
00:09:42.640So it's just very ugly and oppressive.
00:09:44.880And when, you know, when we look at the technology, there's lots of technology everywhere.
00:09:50.820But in a way, it's like, it's like the technology, like someone from the 1950s would imagine what technology would look like in the future.
00:10:15.420It's making me think of the cartoonist, Krom, who, when he draws a street, he really brings forward all the telephone wires and the, you know, cables running around and stuff like that.
00:10:27.380But it's like that, right, when you're in the world of Brazil, the infrastructure is almost cartoonishly exaggerated, right, with the duct work everywhere.
00:10:40.840It's so that you can't ignore that you're sort of shrinking down in the midst of all this infrastructure that sort of oppresses you.
00:10:49.160And an important plot point, you can't touch it.
00:10:52.780You can't touch the duct work or, you know, you got to get the right licensed people and fill out the right forms or you are toast.
00:11:30.320So so what sets the events in motion is that, you know, the basically the torture orders that come up for dissidents inside the bureaucracy are typed out in these old style typewriters that automatically print out.
00:11:42.920And one of the guys is trying to smash a bug.
00:11:45.980There's like this comedic scene because the whole thing is it is a satire while also being extremely dark at the same time.
00:11:52.980And so there's this kind of comedic scene where the guy is trying to stack all this really cheap bureaucratic furniture on top of each other so he can kill the one fly in his tiny office that's bothering him.
00:12:03.320And the fly drops onto the typewriter and messes up the type and it misses it by one letter.
00:12:09.240And so after, you know, this absurd scene of this guy trying to go ahead and, you know, kind of get this fly, we get a hit squad that is coming after the guy who just got the wrong order.
00:12:21.720And so just this average British man with his family sitting there watching Christmas die.
00:12:38.980And then the best part is, you know, at the end of this whole thing, his, you know, traumatized wife has to, like, sign a form in triplicate.
00:12:46.360And, you know, the bureaucrat comes in and is like, no, you have to press down harder.
00:12:50.460Make sure that we get the, you know, we get the signature traced in so that you have a receipt for the murder of your husband.
00:13:09.680And so that's kind of the world we're set in.
00:13:12.900We actually, I should say, the movie actually starts with a little vignette of an absurd kind of Christmas commercial.
00:13:20.180And as people are pushing the cart by during the absurd kind of very British commercial, trying to sell some insane product on a wall full of TVs for Christmas, the whole thing explodes, right?
00:13:34.400Like, there's a whole, there's explosion.
00:13:36.140So we know this is a world that is very, is very regimented, very depressed and oppressively bureaucratic.
00:13:44.620But we also know there's, like, terrorism happening in the background, right, from that visualization.
00:14:03.580And, you know, we're all being oppressed in the name of terror, you know, terrorism and stuff.
00:14:08.000And how much is the government, like, kind of behind it in a way, you know?
00:14:12.560So all these thoughts were brought up by Brazil where, you know, to make it comically absurd, things blow up and everybody just goes about their business almost as if nothing happened.
00:14:25.940They just kind of sweep a little bit and move on, you know?
00:14:28.620Like, this is, you know, the implication being that these terror incidents are just happening all the time and just people go about their lives, you know?
00:14:36.160Yeah, again, that's another absurdist thing that gets introduced in the fancy restaurant scene where they're all sitting there trying to eat their fancy food, which isn't.
00:14:54.680You have to pick the fast food number, even though we're in a fast food restaurant.
00:14:57.860And then they just get, like, a slop of goop that has the picture of the actual dish on top of it.
00:15:03.400But during this whole thing, you know, that scene that everything explodes and there's lots of terrorism and everyone is, you know, the waiters are kind of embarrassed.
00:15:11.140Like, all the people eating there are like, oh, you can't get rid of the terrorists as if there's, like, a homeless man sitting in front of the whole thing.
00:15:18.440And you wonder how much of that is supposed to, is, like, a reflection of the British experience of, kind of, the World War II bombings, right?
00:15:27.320You know, the keep on and carry on thing where we're supposed to just keep consuming and act like everything's normal, even though things are exploding around us.
00:15:36.040Yeah, and it's sort of a bomb, what do they call it, bomb shelter humor or whatever, right?
00:15:42.800So, we have our main character and he gets introduced to this whole thing because he works in, like, the information department.
00:15:52.400He's got to file a check somewhere, right?
00:15:54.760Like, the check has to be written to the family of the guy who ended up dying in his interrogation for being a terrorist, even though he wasn't a terrorist, right?
00:16:14.100And that, you know, like, it's not lining up.
00:16:16.700The name of the person who got snatched and the name of the person who he's supposed to be charging for it or crediting back, they're not the same name.
00:16:24.300They're off by one letter, as you explained, right?
00:16:27.300Yeah, and that's the whole terrifying thing for them is that the bureaucracy is supposed to be perfect.
00:16:33.120Like, one of the propaganda posters, because we get a lot of these 1984 style propaganda posters throughout the film.
00:16:39.900And one of them is that information makes you free.
00:16:43.200That is one of their big things is we have all the information.
00:17:03.660And because we have all the data and we have all the science and, you know, the science is always correct, then any idea that the bureaucracy would make a mistake is ridiculous.
00:17:23.400And so, the fact that his boss, you know, he finds this mistake and his boss just melts down that, you know, how would we ever fix this, right?
00:17:36.500And he wants to, his immediate instinct, his boss is, shh, hush, quiet, you know, like, don't let anyone know that there's been a mistake, right?
00:17:45.680We've got to just, we've got to cover it up.
00:17:48.340And so, he, as this guy who wants to escape, you know, this kind of oppressive bureaucracy at any moment, he goes ahead and volunteers to drive, right?
00:17:58.580Like, I'll go out, even though this is something they never do, I'll go drive and deliver this check.
00:18:50.220Like, you know, so it's some absurd amount.
00:18:52.560And normally, they would just mail this $30 check.
00:18:54.740But it's funny because one of the reasons I wanted to watch this movie was someone I knew was having an issue like this with the IRS, where their grandmother had died.
00:19:04.680And they were, like, in this long six-month battle trying not to get, you know, not, you know, to figure out what to do with a $100 check.
00:19:13.180The IRS simply would not stop calling.
00:21:46.620I can't, you know, they're not allowed to talk about that until you've seen.
00:21:49.580And so she's running around this, you know, this whole kind of gerbil, you know, terrarium thing, trying to figure out how to get into a department.
00:21:59.400And he's like trapped up against the glass, constantly chasing her, you know, getting stuck in elevators that go out and people put, you know, signs that it can't be fixed for the next two weeks because they haven't filed the paperwork as they're like going around this whole time.
00:22:14.500And she's not submissive to this whole system, right?
00:22:18.000I mean, she's trying to work with it out of necessity, but she clearly is not trusting the process.
00:22:37.700And that's absolutely one of the things that draws him to her because, you know, in the other scenes, for instance, again, with that fancy restaurant scene,
00:22:46.860his mother, who is well-to-do, she, she, he's a low-level bureaucrat, but he obviously should have been more.
00:22:54.780That's one of the themes of the film is he was supposed to want to climb up in the bureaucracy, but he's just interested in having his daydreams, right?
00:23:02.620He doesn't, he doesn't want to, he doesn't like this world.
00:23:27.580But they're trying to set him up with the daughter of one of the, one of his mother's friends.
00:23:33.460And she is this sheepish, you know, she, she's involved in the whole thing.
00:23:38.860And so this woman who's fiery and fighting back and, you know, and has that life, has the animation, is coming from outside the system.
00:23:46.660She definitely is, is, uh, well contrasted with this other woman who is kind of playing the game is, you know, she's got like a bunch of facial, she's got these giant braces that, you know, like headgear, uh, like she's still stuck in middle school somewhere from seventies, you know, that kind of thing.
00:24:06.820So she's not only unattractive in the sense of not having that liveliness of this woman he's drawn to, but she also just doesn't look that great.
00:24:17.200So, so, uh, another big theme that is a part of this is the plastic surgery, right?
00:24:24.180One of the, the, the themes we see is, you know, when we're introduced to his mother, she's getting this comment.
00:24:30.220In fact, if you've only seen maybe two pictures from the movie, you've probably seen this one where they're stretching the mother's face out like silly putty.
00:24:38.660And the, you know, the doctor is trying to decide where to cut on him.
00:24:42.580Um, and very interestingly, just like, uh, Gilliam predicts a lot of the bureaucratic problems.
00:24:49.020He predicts a lot of the family problems because the mother that we never see the father, you know, we know that he died at some point.
00:24:57.420They have a conversation about, uh, how he, he knew one of the upper ups and something, but you know, that he's, he's without a father.
00:25:04.380The son is without a father and the mother is treating him as something of, uh, just a trophy or something.
00:25:12.220To only pay attention to, uh, uh, you know, very fleetingly only when she can introduce him or, or try to, you know, uh, elevate him, make him play the game.
00:25:30.160And she, uh, and she's constantly looking for the attention of younger men right in front of him.
00:25:35.760And so one of the reasons she's going through these plastic surgeries is to look more presentable to, you know, so that it very much is that like, uh, you know, single mother who doesn't care very much about the child is always just, you know, chasing after the attention of younger and younger men.
00:26:35.800So the, the next big, uh, big kind of twist is when he needs to find the information, uh, to, to track down this girl from his dreams.
00:26:46.220And I want to get into that because the information retrieval is a very interesting euphemism that ends up getting used in the film.
00:26:52.980I want to talk a little bit about that.
00:26:54.340But before we do guys, let me remind you about your absolute moral duty to get out of the whole bureaucratic thing and hire based people in based companies through new founding.
00:27:05.600Hey guys, I need to tell you about today's sponsor, new founding talent.
00:27:09.660Look, we all know that the job market is a disaster right now.
00:27:13.280Based people can't find good companies to work for and good companies can't find anybody to get the job done.
00:27:20.740The competency crisis is very, very real.
00:27:23.540So how do we get these two incredibly important groups together?
00:27:27.200We need organizations like new founding, new founding has created a network of high excellence professionals who are seeking to join grounded American businesses.
00:27:36.780These are individuals, often in elite organizations who are ready for a team and a mission that supports their values instead of working against them.
00:27:45.660Aligned companies are already using this network to hire high trust, exceptional individuals who can match the culture and mission of their teams.
00:27:53.700So if you're looking for better employees to build a better world, you need to go ahead and apply for access to the new founding talent network at newfounding.com backslash talent.
00:28:04.120You'll get connected with candidates who will build your business.
00:28:13.760So before he gets transferred to information retrieval, he ends up deciding to take this promotion that he's been denying for a long time so he can.
00:28:21.760No, no, no, no, that's how he gets, that's how he, he, he's doing the promotion so he can be an information retrieval.
00:29:21.340You know, the central services is this kind of, you know, this bureaucratic organization that takes care of all the maintenance.
00:29:30.040And he, our main character calls in because his air conditioning gets stuck and, but, but they won't show up.
00:29:36.540And so, you know, they, he keeps getting a recording that says it's not a recording telling him that, you know, the thing will be taken care of soon.
00:29:43.840And instead, Robert De Niro's character shows up and he's, the great thing about Robert De Niro's character is that he's this dangerous rogue.
00:29:53.320You know, he's, he's got to run in with a gun and he's got to scare the main character.
00:29:57.200And you reason, find out the reason he has the gun is because fixing the ducks is illegal.
00:30:03.300And he's like the, you know, he's a scab.
00:30:10.760And so, and so he like runs in and he like zip lines away from the building, like Batman and everything, but he's just some dude who fixes the air conditioning.
00:31:12.440It's like, we discover that the, the, the guy, the reason the guy ended up getting murdered is not because, you know, he's this horrific terrorist or he, you know, he's this menace to society.
00:31:22.420It's that they confused him with an illegitimate AC repairman.
00:31:54.660Just in there for the moment, but the moment he, and you forget, like, it's really young De Niro, you know, it's, it's in the, you know, so, uh, so, so it's a pretty young De Niro for the, for that movie.
00:32:05.680Um, but, but he goes, he, he takes this, uh, promotion to the, uh, information retrieval bureau.
00:32:13.820And you're thinking, okay, well, so that means like he sits around and he does a lot of, uh, a lot of computer work, which yeah, they do.
00:32:20.680But, uh, but he does this so he can find the girl, right?
00:32:23.760That's why he finally takes a promotion he always hated.
00:32:25.820So he can get the level of access necessary to search for this girl's name and everything.
00:32:30.920But what you slowly start to realize through clues, uh, you know, like the, the, there's a stenographer listening to all of the tape from what's going on and she's typing it out.
00:32:41.700And you slowly realize it's notes from a torture.
00:33:02.840And then he runs into his friend, which was introduced early in the film, the one, a film, a friend who was chiding him for being so low ranking.
00:33:10.640And, you know, why aren't, you know, why aren't you living up to your potential, the kind that your father and your, your mother expected of you.
00:33:17.860And you discover that, uh, you know, you think he's a doctor and you slowly realize, oh, he's a doctor in the sense that, you know, he's torturing people, you know, and he's got this, this weird mask on, uh, this kind of, that, that's got the weird baby face.
00:33:31.780Again, if you've never seen, if you've seen a couple images from the film, that's probably one that you've seen, uh, the character in the torture chair with that.
00:33:38.720Uh, and, and so you, you slowly realize that, uh, that that's, that's what's actually happening in this building.
00:33:46.400And it's even more horrific because the guy wasn't supposed to die.
00:33:50.400In fact, the way that the, uh, the friend who's the, the torture absolves himself of responsibility is that, uh, because there was a mistake made in the lower, uh, bureaucracy, uh, the, the guy he tortured had a heart condition he wasn't supposed to have.
00:34:07.260And so he's not responsible for the murder.
00:34:09.880He thought he was torturing Robert De Niro.
00:34:34.340So this woman is trying to track down things and she, they don't even know that he's dead, you know, and, and, uh, in the midst of this, for a lot of this, uh, they don't realize the husband is dead for, for much of this.
00:34:46.140And no one would have told her probably if it wasn't for the discovery of this check and everything.
00:34:50.920And so, you know, there's just this constant showing of, of how no one can be held accountable.
00:34:57.020It's all people just dying to a ridiculous system.
00:35:00.060There's no responsibility anywhere inside of the bureaucracy.
00:35:04.340Yeah, this is, this Kafka, this Kafkaesque system doesn't have accountability.
00:35:11.840Everywhere you turn, you see people who find a way to do things, but not be responsible for what they're doing, not be held accountable for what they're doing.
00:35:31.880And again, you can't help, but feel how relevant that is today.
00:35:36.020You know, how, how many police officers, how many FBI, you know, how, how many, even judges, people who are, you know, they're given the task of being a linchpin in the system of adjudicating issues would just turn around and say, well, I got the wrong data from the experts.
00:35:54.020I got the, yeah, you can't really blame me.
00:35:56.740I'm not really someone who can bear responsibility.
00:35:59.840It just mirrors how much of our system is, is what Carlyle would have called a government by steam instead of one where actual people are held accountable and make real decisions based on what they, what they understand.
00:36:29.080There's no, there's no real experiences involved.
00:36:32.580Everything is an echo of an echo of an echo.
00:36:35.100You start to see, you know, there, there's technically Christmas happening and everyone exchanges gifts, but no one cares when they get them.
00:36:46.280No one cares about what's inside them.
00:36:48.120All, all, and everyone always gives the same gift.
00:36:51.460They've just got like 12 of them sitting around the exact same wrapping paper.
00:36:56.080Um, you know, the, the, the billboards say, you know, like consumers for Christ are the, you know, is the only, uh, kind of religious symbol we see involved with Christmas, you know?
00:37:13.420But, but, but it's, but it's, it reminds, you know, when we look at, uh, you know, our own, our own government that just, you know, celebrated, uh, you know, trans awareness day on Easter.
00:37:28.760And the way that every corporation and every government has reduced every of our, every one of our Christian holidays into the secular symbols.
00:37:37.060So you're not allowed to have anything about Christ on Easter or Christmas, but you can have Santa Claus, you can have reindeer, you can have Easter bunnies.
00:37:45.480You know, if this is the worst thing, if anyone plays a video games that have like that live service type model, uh, every one of these holidays is just like egg day or bunny day or, you know, sleigh day.
00:37:58.680There's always this, this weird sanitized version of this.
00:38:02.860And again, it's just amazing how easily that's reflected out of this movie into our present day where every one of these bureaucracies sanitizes these religious, you know, symbols.
00:38:13.120One, one of the things that strikes me around, uh, you know, we have family movie night every Friday night.
00:38:18.160And so we've watched a lot of the films that are suitable for children, right.
00:38:24.480And one of the things that always strikes me is they will have the Santa and the Easter bunny and so forth, but it's all about, it all ends up being about how you have to believe in Santa.
00:38:35.700The whole movie ends up the linchpin is you've got to really believe in this fake thing.
00:38:52.660But, but it, I see it in movie after movie after movie, the same thing.
00:38:56.340This huge emphasis on, you know, you've got, you've got to clap for the fairy, right?
00:39:00.500And then Peter Pan or whatever, she'll die.
00:39:02.620It's, but it's like that over and over through these holiday films.
00:39:05.980Yeah, that is strange how that, it's like they feel that the archetype has to be presented inside the movie, but they know they can't present the real thing because that will affect people.
00:40:16.880And again, it feels like, uh, we're, we're trapped again.
00:40:20.120And, you know, what, 30 years before the nine 11, uh, you know, 20 or 30 years before the nine 11 events, uh, you, you have this reflection of, okay, uh, the, the, the specter of terrorism means we have to submit to this constant bureaucracy, this constant security apparatus, everything has to be monitored, surveilled, but no one has actually ever run into this situation.
00:40:42.120And, you know, like people die, like we see the terrorist events, you know, but, but no one is really sure who's responsible or how anyone would, would, would actually be held accountable again for this.
00:40:55.640And that, that's what I was trying to get at earlier on that.
00:40:57.780The, the global war on terror era that I remember very well, it felt like Brazil was the movie for that era.
00:41:04.600You know, it's, it, you've got to submit to all this apparatus they're building and take your shoes off at the airport, which we're still doing.
00:41:12.120We're still doing, et cetera, because, you know, there's terrorists out there, man.
00:41:18.300Well, and now they're doing it in the New York subway, right?
00:42:07.020And, and I love that in one of the interviews, uh, in kind of the very British moment, you know, someone is there, they're playing the background interview with a TV and one of the British ministers.
00:42:16.040And they're asking him, Hey, you know, why do you think there's terrorism?
00:42:19.120What do you, what do you think is going on?
00:42:20.560What's motivating these people to constantly commit these acts of terror?
00:42:24.460And the response from the minister is, Oh, I think it's a lack of sense of fair play.
00:42:29.920You know, they, they just, yeah, they, they just, a lot of people don't want to see someone else get ahead.
00:42:35.420And if, you know, if they would just play by the rules that they would, they would be okay too, but they just can't stand it.
00:42:41.800You know, it very much is that, that, that, that very British sense of, uh, of humor there, but, uh, but, but a beautiful thing.
00:42:50.560It makes me think of like, they hate us for our freedom, you know, all that, that they were peddling, you know?
00:43:49.240I meant to say it earlier, but let me drop it in now, which is that, you know, as you talked about the world that he gives us where, um, well, it's a, because it's, he's funny.
00:44:00.960And it's, it's a combination of this devotion to the idea of expertise and of, of bureaucratic process that is really well designed and all that combined with a clearly incompetent system.
00:44:19.180Uh, it, it, um, it makes me think of the progressives, not the progressives now, but the progressives from a hundred plus years ago or, or in the U S or the Fabian society in UK, where it's all about rule by experts.
00:44:34.840And so, you know, we've got to get rid of the chaos of charity and have a welfare state instead that has experts, social workers, bureaucratic processes.
00:45:05.300And that, this movie is, could, it could be read so many ways, but one of them as a, as an absolute slam against rule by experts and the progressives.
00:45:13.960And again, at every turn, like the oppression of the system, this, this very, uh, kind of, uh, absurdist, but dark aesthetic is contrasted with that high fantasy, uh, dream sequence.
00:45:27.980They're always peppered in to remind us that he's soaring above.
00:45:30.340Because one of the interesting things about the movie is it, it has in a way, uh, some of the beautiful aesthetics that we would think of in some of these types of movies.
00:45:39.580It has a neo-noir, you know, art deco type look to it.
00:46:20.460Speaking of the neo-noir part, uh, one of the scenes visually that for me really stands out is people are leaving, I think, information retrieval, if I remember correctly.
00:46:29.180But there's a bunch of bureaucrats, they're all dressed with, uh, fedoras and trench coats.
00:46:37.300They're all dressed very similarly and they're all leaving work, uh, dressed the same.
00:46:42.060And I, if I remember correctly, the camera pans up and is above them and just all these very similar looking figures pouring out of the building.
00:46:48.420These bureaucrats, well, there were some bureaucrats, right?
00:47:02.460So he ends up, uh, thinking that she's a terrorist and they go on this kind of long chase with the authorities, uh, you know, a lot of absurd, uh, things happen, but eventually he ends up being captured.
00:47:15.980And he ends up in the very torture chair, uh, you know, that, that his friend operates.
00:47:21.340In fact, he finds out his friend is behind the mask and he's trying to, you know, uh, he's trying to appeal to him as humanity, but he's trying to, you know, you're, you're embarrassing me.
00:47:30.920He's covering the microphone, making sure to pull his mask down, uh, you know, so that his, you know, his kind of emotion, uh, doesn't show.
00:47:38.060So even though he's known this guy for a long time, he's connected to his family at the end of the day, it's just another business transaction.
00:47:43.440You know, it's, it's, it's another, another thing, but, but at the last second, um, you know, the, the, the rogue HVAC guys rappel down, uh, and they, you know, they, they shoot the, uh, the guy in the head and, uh, they, they, they rescue him.
00:47:59.980The main character, they start taking him out of the building.
00:48:02.360I love that there's this huge, uh, again, it's not as stylized as the matrix, but it reminded me of that big lobby shooting scene, you know, in the matrix, huge firefight, but the whole time, uh, the, the janitors keep cleaning and the guy at the desk keeps doing boring paperwork.
00:48:19.720Like, and it's really great because the janitors again, have like, they don't just have vacuums.
00:48:24.900Like it's all got duct work being dragged behind it.
00:48:27.440So like all of the gun shootout or like diving over like vacuum cleaner duct that's being dragged across the lobby and everything.
00:48:36.060So it's this absurd, like high energy, you know, firefight there's gruesome, like there's bloody, you know, uh, there's gore in this for sure.
00:48:43.840It's rated R, uh, but it's all happening in this very absurd, you know, manner while everyone else is just hearing on the most mundane tasks.
00:49:34.780So they go through and it's interesting because even once he's rescued and he meets her, you know, they, they kind of meet back.
00:49:41.860Like they're going back into these dream sequences again, you know, so he finally gets her, he gets to bed her and everything, you know, and, and they go through these dream sequences and you're not sure like, okay, he's just seeing her the way he wants to see her.
00:49:54.200And then it cuts back to the way she actually looks and these things.
00:49:56.480And he like goes through this strange dream sequence of his mother and he's like at a funeral.
00:50:02.580And, uh, you know, this is where she's super young and she doesn't even want to talk to him anymore because she's surrounded by all.
00:50:08.500And so things are getting more and more dreamlike.
00:50:10.640They're getting further or further away from the real world.
00:50:13.900And he keeps tumbling through these different kind of vignettes of, of, of more surreal dream until eventually you get to the, the big kind of twist ending where you realize it's all the dream.
00:50:25.780And he's still stuck in the torture chair.
00:50:49.240And when we started diving into it, I was like, Oh, I didn't even know this was a thing.
00:50:52.220And it looks like there was a battle between Gillum to, to keep in the edgier kind of depressing cut.
00:50:57.660But of course it didn't do well with audiences that were, you know, I want to watch Monty Python, you know?
00:51:02.160Uh, and so, and, and so they kind of kept, like you said, they, they kind of, it looks like they kept, we haven't seen the other ending, so we can't comment on kind of the, the more toned down ending, but it does look like there, you know, there's a Blade Runner-esque battle over the editing rights.
00:51:19.340But the real, the real ending that the, the Gilliam director's ending or whatever is that, um, they, uh, the torturers realize that he is just completely insane at this point.
00:51:30.100He's just, he's completely in his head, completely in his dreams.
00:51:33.260And the film ends with them just walking away with him in the chair, humming, of course, Brazil, the song Brazil, which is the theme throughout the movie.
00:51:43.220I've always loved that song ever since, ever since that movie, I've loved the song.
00:51:45.840But when you, when you explain the movie, movie to people and you start with, it's called Brazil and it has nothing to do with Brazil at all.
00:52:42.540He's really keeping with the darker dystopian tradition here.
00:52:47.640Uh, what do you think that says about, you know, his, his, his understanding of the bureaucratic system and what he thinks will be the possibility of, of people breaking through?
00:52:56.700Well, this is the time to show your book, the total state.
00:53:01.020I was actually thinking about it, thinking back through this film because it is, um, the, the moments of escape from this total bureaucratic state in the film are, um, all illusions.
00:53:21.000So in the film, as the viewer, you get to go with him on his dream, in his dreams, and you get to feel a relief from the, the, the, the ugliness and the bureaucracy and the system, the solace of the system.
00:53:34.460But it's clear in the film that that is all just made up in his mind.
00:53:39.300That's not the lived reality of the people in this world.
00:53:54.520He's never able to get out of the system.
00:53:56.600So, so, yeah, I mean, I, I think that the, the, the whole point that Gilliam's doing is that he is going to, he's really going to do a dystopian.
00:54:27.300I mean, I, I didn't, I hadn't thought about that in its entirety, but you're right that there's every moment of hope, like every moment of resistance really is one in which there is an illusion.
00:54:39.020Maybe the only thing that's even a deviation is the Robert De Niro character.
00:54:43.760Like we were pretty sure he's real and even in that moment, his act of rebellion, like his very edgy, uh, way to escape the system is to go out and repair stuff for free to people when the bureaucracy isn't getting around to it.
00:54:59.660That's as wild as he's not, he's not exactly, he's not exactly an anarchist tearing it down or something.
00:55:31.580So you wanted to say more about the, um, the, the, yeah.
00:55:34.960So thinking about this, thinking about this movie, um, and maybe some of the other themes in Gilliam's film, I wanted to particularly mention, uh, the adventures of Baron Munchausen.
00:55:45.000And I think that if you, um, like Brazil and you haven't caught Baron Munchausen, I'd really recommend it.
00:55:52.160Uh, and I think you'll see a lot of, a lot of similar themes.
00:55:55.260And as I was mentioning, Aaron, I think it has the best, like little,
00:55:58.640it's like 30 seconds, 30, 60 seconds, uh, reactionary moment in, in a Gilliam film that absolutely slams like the French revolution and the leftist violence.
00:56:56.380Um, and he says, so why couldn't fantasy be, as I think we see it as in Brazil, why can't it be an escape from your awful system that you guys are a part of?
00:57:07.220You know, this, this modern dystopian bureaucratic soulless machine that we're more and more getting trapped in.
00:57:25.480Anyway, so I, that's something that this movie made me think of, which I had never made that connection before thinking about Tolkien on escape.
00:57:33.520It's interesting that there's never any moments of, of fantasy, uh, on the, we, we see a lot of media in the movie, uh, but it's never anything of a, always news.
00:57:45.300And, um, part of that is obviously just moving the story along.
00:57:48.380It's, it's just, it's, you know, just story pipe.
00:57:50.540But there's also the fact that in this omnipresent bureaucratic state where, you know, you would often see, uh, you know, in other dystopias, some kind of propaganda film or some, you know, some, some kind of entertainment that at least had the propaganda message inside of it.
00:59:59.120So in the Left Wing Terror Series, I try to fill in the for no reason at all, um, and, and show how there is a consistent history for hundreds of years, uh, particularly with the French Revolution afterwards.
01:00:12.740But we actually start the series prior to that, um, there's a history of what I think is fair to call left-wing terror, where there's assassinations, there's terror bombings, like we see in Brazil.
01:00:32.720Um, and then it doesn't work out so well, and it's time for another round of left-wing violence to, to try to make the utopia happen this time.
01:00:39.920Um, many of these episodes I talk about are not well remembered.
01:00:44.300Um, for example, one of the episodes is, uh, about Red Bavaria when part of Germany, uh, was taken over by communists after World War I.
01:00:53.840Um, another section is about Italy, where a number of Italian cities were taken over by communists.
01:01:00.200Um, and this is all flushed down the toilet because it doesn't make the left look so good, and our history, as I think you've figured out, Aron, is, seems to be pretty much curated by the left.
01:01:12.440Written by the victors, unfortunately.
01:01:56.000You know, again, the, the story of Brazil is not particularly complicated that there's not, you know, other, there's a couple of twists and turns, but you can follow it pretty easily.
01:02:04.560Uh, the, the interesting thing, the thing is how much of the visual you can catch.
01:02:08.900Uh, we, we can, we talked a lot about the visual representation here, a lot going on on the screen.
01:02:14.460And you brought out details now I'm wanting to watch it again.
01:02:16.840Cause I'm like, well, I don't remember catching the janitors anyway.
01:02:20.640So there's a lot of things that like the, the, the main thing happening on the screen has got your attention and off in the corner, there's something really funny going on.
01:02:30.540That's the feeling I have the whole time is you, you really, you could do a where's Waldo to find all the absurd little bits that are occurring in each scene.
01:02:38.320So it's one of those things that definitely benefits from a careful watching, not so much for the story, but for the visuals.
01:02:43.800We, we can talk about it ad nauseum, but it's something you really should see for yourself.
01:02:48.000We haven't, even if we just spoiled the ending for you, it's worth watching just because you capture all of those visuals.
01:02:55.720Uh, Capitalismo says Gilliam is great, but Baron Munchausen is the best of the imagination trilogy.
01:03:03.520I've heard the term imagination trilogy.
01:03:05.500That's might be time bandits, Brazil and the adventures, adventures of Baron Munchausen, because the later films are the Fisher King with Robin Williams, um, 12 monkeys, fear and loathing in Las Vegas.
01:03:17.920Um, and then some, some later more recent films, but those are sort of the classic, the eighties and the nineties films.
01:03:23.940I think are really, if you watch those, you'll understand why Gilliam's one of my top two directors of all time.
01:03:45.440I think the, I'm trying to remember, it's like the main actor died in the, the beginning of the film.
01:03:50.340And so they ended up placing him throughout the film with different people because, you know, they, you know, so they, they, they like turned it into a visual, uh, kind of, uh, language, which is an interesting way to solve that problem.
01:04:02.880But, um, but that's all I really remember about that movie.
01:04:06.840But yeah, for what I've seen, yeah, I love 12 monkeys.
01:04:26.800But yeah, that's one of those that kept popping on, uh, like TNT all the time when I was, uh, you know, like one of those, those, uh, uh, channels that played movies all the time, uh, in the middle of the day.
01:05:01.340Um, so the terrorists are a backdrop and I don't, frankly, I don't think he ever tells us or even suggests whether the terrorists are real or, uh, what's it called a false flag or a mix.
01:05:14.240You, you, you, you can kind of, you kind of bring your own ideas to that, but I don't think he really gives us much.
01:05:22.260It really is that, uh, you know, the, especially as the dreams get more thoroughly mixed in, uh, and it's not always clear, you know, how much of a scene is reality.
01:05:32.320Uh, that becomes more and more of a question as well.
01:05:35.320And, and I think it's like Blade Runner as where, you know, the more you, the, the more information you get about what actually is happening, the worse the film gets, like the cuts where they try to explain everything about, you know, who's a replicant and who isn't and who's definitive.
01:05:48.780It's like, no, actually the ambiguity is a much better, uh, aspect of the film.
01:05:53.460So I think it's actually better that we don't know, uh, you know, how much of that is, is manufactured by the government.
01:05:59.360How much of what happened is, is his imagination.
01:06:02.320I think all of that being ambiguous is part of the charm and, and, uh, uh, creepy weird also says Jesus comes with baggage.
01:06:18.740Uh, well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this one up guys again, make sure to check out Steven's channel, especially that violence of the left, uh, series.
01:06:32.740And of course, if it's your first time on this channel, make sure that you go ahead and subscribe.
01:06:37.180Make sure that you turn on your notifications, click the bell, everything that you need to catch these streams when they go live.
01:06:43.360Uh, if you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure that you go ahead and subscribe to the Orr McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform.
01:06:50.020And if you guys would like to check me out over on Timcast, I'll be on the show tomorrow night.