Number One: Brazil (Gilliam, 1985) [Y]

"Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away"

-Buffalo Springfield, 'For What It's Worth"

If Dr. Stranglove taught us how to stop worrying and love the bomb, Brazil is what happens when you stop worrying and learn to love paranoia. I remember a conversation with Little Earl over the work of Michel Foucault. In the book Discipline and Punish Foucault describes the Panopticon, a prison innovation used to observe all prisoners at all times. He then uses this as a metaphor for modern life. Our response: Who cares if someone is watching you as long as they aren't doing anything?

At some point it seemed novel for the government to spy on its subjects. Now it's old hat. I look at the set design of Brazil, heavy on ducts, and I recognize the local Chipotle restaurant. So does this mean Brazil doesn't have anything left to say to me? On the contrary, I think Brazil is the one movie from the 80's that transcends its decade completely.

The film moves back and forth between the protagonist's fantasys and his mundane life as a petty bureaucrat in a near future dystopia. As the film progresses it becomes more difficult to discern one from the other. The conflict of the film begins when Sam Lowry decides to do something to help a woman whose husband that has been arrested, tortured, and killed after a bug flies into a typewriter and the wrong name is recorded. The government intended to kill an insurgent plumber who fights against government utilities bureaucracy. In case you haven't seen the movie I won't say who plays him, but it's one of my favorite gratuitous cameos of all time. Along the way Sam meets a woman who looks just like a woman in his ever present fantasies and instantly falls in love.

After Sam decides to take a stand he discovers the real evil of the Panopticon. Sam's newfound morality and love attract the attention of the government that he has been trying to avoid through mediocrity. He takes a promotion secured by his influential mother in order to help the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately, every time Sam involves himself with the government's machinations he becomes more susceptible to their control. Terry Gilliam is protesting against this inversely proportional relationship in Brazil. As Vonnegut, another paragon of sci-fi dark humor, wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” You can refrain from being bad all your life, Sam. It's when you try to do something good that they get ya.

Love, morality, and social responsibility should be the high points of life, those moments we are most proud of. The totalitarian social system acts upon those elements of our lives because they stand out and make us vulnerable. Terrorist attacks occur regularly in the world of Brazil. Industry has destroyed the natural environment and business advertisements block the resultant vista of ash and smoke. The government responds with bumbling bureaucracy and feel-good consumerist torture, always delivered with a smile.

Brazil presents a mid-way point between 1984 and Brave New World. The future isn't run by an evil ubermensch like O'Brien with his party. Nor is it run by technocrats using biological alterations to split humanity into manageable subspecies. Instead, it's a predictably inept descent into manic nostalgia for past mediocrities. The powers that be don't even control themselves, much less all of society. The do violence out of fear and anger when they realize how little control they have. However, as pathetic as this is, that's real flesh they're destroying.

I can't avoid a short comparison between our current political situation and that of Brazil. The parallels are just too numerous to ignore - vast governmental and corporate ineptitude, strong social pressure to accept mediocrity as triumph, and an absurd and ineffectual response to terrorism.

P.S. I'm about half-way done with Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. I highly recommend it if you go in for Brazil/Catch-22/Dr.Strangelove style dark humor.