Critical Reviews of Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL

Roger Ebert in 1986 vs. Keith Breese in 2006

Terry Gilliam’s Brazil remains a popular ‘cult film’ and is generally considered an “intellectually loaded and visually remarkable masterpiece.” (McCarthy 32). However, Roger Ebert’s final verdict in 1986 was two out of five stars (Ebert, “Brazil”). Twenty years later Keith Breese and many other critics give the film five out of five stars  (Breese, “Brazil”). The turbulent history of Brazil left multiple versions available, and while Keith Breese reviewed the Criterion Collection DVD and the 142 minute “Directors Cut” Roger Ebert, in 1986, would have viewed the 132 minute “American Cut.” Although the ten-minute difference exists it is irrelevant to their overall reactions to the film. Their opposite opinions come from both a difference in taste and from the different political climate at the time of their review, and it illustrates twenty-years of change in both Hollywood and the rest of the world.

Roger Ebert is one of the few recognizable film critics in the world. He has worked for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975, is syndicated in more than 200 international newspapers, he has written 15 books, and for 23 years he co-hosted “Siskel & Ebert” with the late Gene Siskel (rogerebert.com). In his long career Ebert has built a reputation for himself as a film expert and reliable critic. In his review, following a summary of the film, Ebert compares Brazil to the “lean and dour” film of 1984 released the previous year, and states that Brazil “seems almost like a throwback to the psychedelic 1960s, to an anarchic vision in which the best way to improve things it to blow them up.” Ebert considers further contrasts with 1984 claiming that Brazil “apparently has had no financial restraints…[and] is awash in elaborate special effects, sensational sets, … and a general lack of discipline.” He concludes with a mention of his favorite scene:

Sam moves into half an office and finds himself engaged in a tug-of-war over his desk with the man through the wall. I was reminded of a Chaplin film, "Modern Times," and reminded, too, that in Chaplin economy and simplicity were virtues, not the enemy. (Ebert, “Brazil”)

Keith Breese is a critic from Denver working for Filmcritic.com. The website was founded in 1995 and hosts thousands of reviews with feature stories contributed by twenty critics from around the world. Breese’s review also summarizes the film, but then focuses on the prophetic nature of Brazil. He hints at Brazil’s prediction of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York, how “In 1985 audiences scoffed at the idea of terrorists infiltrating the government and waging war on corporate interests.” Breese concludes by saying Brazil “had its fingers firmly on the pulse of world culture and the erratic beat telegraphed The End long before the War on Terror.”

The key difference between the two reviews is the time in which the authors were viewing the film. Roger Ebert was viewing it in a time when the media and popular culture was obsessed with George Orwell’s book, when the Cold War still continued, and when Hollywood was moving through a period of upheaval due to visual effects and the success of big-budget summer blockbusters Star Wars (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Blade Runner (1982). George Orwell had become a popular topic because the year 1984 had finally arrived and people were eager to pass judgment on whether Orwell had been proven right or wrong. Twenty years later, Keith Breese reviewed the Criterion Collection release of Brazil at the height of the controversial Bush administration. The attacks of 11 September 2001, the controversial prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, secret wire-tapping, the Patriot Act, and the unending Iraq war had altered political reality. In Hollywood there had been a re-emergence of the classical epic (Gladiator, 2000), the musical (Chicago, 2002) and the start of the modern super-hero movie (Batman Begins, 2005). The reviews’ differences are products of their environments. Ebert remains skeptical because from the position of 1986 some of the elements in Brazil were too fantastical to be believed, but in 2006 Breese saw how those same fantastical elements had been surpassed by reality.

When Roger Ebert considered the film’s “general lack of discipline” he was a decade ahead of the mind-bending visual styles of Terry Gilliam’s later film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), or Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000). As with most groundbreaking Hollywood films, Brazil is a stylistic but by no means undisciplined film by today’s standards. Keith Breese called Brazil’s “Theatre of the Absurd” both “surprisingly consistent and emotionally charged.” This difference could be from a place of personal taste, but Ebert’s review stands alone on Rotten Tomatoes (RT) as the only review from the film’s first run in 1986. His is also the only one of forty to give it a negative rating. Modern audiences have caught up to Gilliam’s original idea so that Breese can accurately call the film “visionary.” Considering the uneasy production and release of Brazil it is a remarkable achievement by Terry Gilliam to have stayed as consistent as he did.

A difference in opinion over a twenty-year gap is common for films given the status of cult classic. 12 Angry Men (Lumet 1954), A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick 1971), and Donnie Darko (Kelly 2001) are examples of movies that failed in their initial release only to find classic status in later years (McCarthy 5). Brazil’s genius is in its timelessness. Ebert considered the film’s setting “a time and place that seems vaguely like our own,” and Breese calls it a “retro-future totalitarian state.” Both saw the same timeless attitude that Gilliam had adapted from Kafka’s The Trail (McCarthy 32), but because they watched the film in two radically different times they applied the timeless quality to their contemporary lives in different ways. Ebert saw an indulgent and over-budget attempt to follow the trend of glamour without substance that was “filmed … heedless of sense.” Breese saw a “surrealist manifesto … a pop culture cartoon explosion wrapped over an epic tale of the everyman.” In the book accompanying the DVD, Jack Mathews explains that Brazil “needs to be seen over and over to be fully appreciated.” This explains the difficulty Gilliam faced in getting his film released because “Hollywood is not geared to marketing movies that demanding.” (Mathews 3). The style of the film combined with the detail of its satire make Brazil a well-aged film that created the change necessary to convert two stars into a five.

Works Cited

Brazil: The Final Cut. Dir. Terry Gilliam. 1985. DVD. Criterion Collection, 2006.

Breese, Keith. "Brazil." Rev. of Brazil, by Terry Gilliam. Filmcritic.com 9 May 2006

Ebert, Roger. "Brazil." Rev. of Brazil, by Terry Gilliam. The Chicago Sun-Times 17 Jan. 1986

filmcritic.com. 1995-2009. Christopher Null. 26 Feb 2009 <www.filmcritic.com>

Mathews, Jack. "Dreaming Brazil." Brazil: The Final Cut. Criterion Collection, 2006.

McCarthy, Soren. Cult Movies in Sixty Seconds. Great Britain: Fusion Press, 2003.

rogerebert.com. The Chicago Sun-Times. 26 Feb 2009 <www.rogerebert.suntimes.com>

RT, Rotten Tomatoes. 26 Feb 2009 <www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1003033-brazil>

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Stanley Kubrick never made a Best Picture winner and never won the award for Best Director. In his 50-year career he was honoured by the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences only once; in 1968 he won the Special Effects award for 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kinn 175). Generally considered the greatest example of classic film effects 2001: A Space Odyssey is also considered one of the greatest science-fiction films of all time. Following the campy films of the 1950s Kubrick created an adult science-fiction film that was as carefully crafted as any of the mature films of other genres. By doing this he caused a major reversal in Hollywood, where the craft and artistry associated with science fiction was elevated to equal any other genre. This achievement, and Kubrick’s influence on future filmmakers, marks 2001: A Space Odyssey as a turning point in science-fiction filmmaking.

At the time Kubrick set out to make the proverbial “‘good’ science-fiction film” (Clarke vii), the USSR was the leader in space technology and the recently-created National Aeronautics and Space Administration was still buried in the early stages experimentation. Kubrick and his pre-production team spent months working with engineers and scientists to design the technology of space to appear logical. The first scene set in space following the Dawn of Man segment, which is centered around a ship docking with a space station, is prototypical of what Kubrick would do in the rest of the film. The station itself is made of two parallel rings rotating around the center of the station to create centrifugal force, which is comparable to artificial gravity. Before 2001 the issue of gravity in space was never addressed. It was a matter of convenience for there to be gravity and it was not considered important by filmmakers at the time. This is the first example in the film of Kubrick considering what had been dismissed previously, which is at the core of how he affected the science-fiction genre.

Kubrick’s use of rotation to create artificial gravity continues throughout the film. A stewardess on the shuttle to the moon walks up a curving wall to reach the cockpit, Dave Bowman is introduced running laps around the central ring of the Discovery ship, and when Bowman and Poole prepare for a space walk they travel between sections of the ship turning in opposite directions. In order to achieve some of these shots, Kubrick, his crew and the actors were required to follow mathematical precision in their movements to co-ordinate the positions of set pieces to allow the actors to appear to walk normally. The set pieces were extremely large, mechanical stages, which were unheard of before 2001. Years later, however, films like The Hunt For Red October (1990), Mission to Mars (2000), and The Perfect Storm (2000) followed Kubrick’s method and were filmed on mechanical sets, which were only possible because of the earlier work of 2001.

The space sequences, such as the Blue Danube Waltz or the landing at the Moon base, were equally mechanical operations, but on a smaller scale. Model spacecraft were built and manipulated through slow tracking shots. Unlike those used in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), the models of 2001 are manipulated in slow, careful ways to simulate their colossal size. George Lucas called 2001 “a visual film” (Standing on…), meaning it showed its story through images rather than told it through dialogue. The long, dialogue-free space sequences are the clearest examples of where Kubrick defined 2001 on a level of motion rather than description. The mechanical sets he used were key to that achievement.

The models photographed in these mechanical sets were carefully designed to appear realistic. Filmmaker Dennis Muren said they would “get model kits and put little wibbly things on it – it didn’t matter what it was, … and your mind [would] say ‘Hey, that’s something – I don’t know what it is, but it must be functional.” (Standing on…). The idea of creating details that are not understood but are accepted as realities within the science-fiction story was another innovation of 2001. The mechanical elements seen within the film are mostly unexplained, but the appearance of functionality adds to the realism. This is key to what was different about the films before 2001. The alien ships in The Day The Earth Stood Still or The War of the Worlds (1953) were based on the Roswell, New Mexico alien myth where “someone said they saw something that looked like a saucer.” (Muren, Standing on…). After 2001 created purpose behind the design of technology, the standard was raised. Star Wars (1977), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Alien (1979), and Wall-E (2008) are all science-fiction films that involved massive pre-production planning for the design of space technology. The most important change between pre- and post-2001 filmmaking is the pre-production design. When science fiction became a possibility for mature themes, the audiences demanded a more adult standard of craft. After Kubrick created a mature story in a mature way, later films like Solaris (1972), Blade Runner (1982) and Contact (1997) required equally high standards of design to match their adult themes.

At the heart of 2001’s story is the mystery of space. The indecipherable ending of 2001 acts as “a bow to the unknowable” (Harlan, Standing on…), which has caused endless debate. The Beyond the Infinite sequence is the most recognizable part of the film’s finale where Dave Bowman is sent hurtling through an ever-changing tunnel of light. Douglas Trumbull adapted slit-scan photography, a complex and time-consuming process, for 2001’s “Star-Gate” sequence (2001: The Making of a Myth). This same technology would be adapted for Star Trek: The Next Generation to create the warp-drive image used in the opening of every episode. It was also used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture for a similar “Star Gate” sequence, which was meant to echo that of 2001. Following the slit-scan shots are various nebula-like objects. These were created with chemicals and coloured paints photographed in water. Steven Spielberg used this “cloud tank” technology for his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) to create storm clouds that announce the arrival of alien spacecraft (Making of…). Although most of the technology used by Kubrick in 2001 was made obsolete in the 1980s special effects revolution, the pioneering high standard of the final product influenced many Hollywood film and television directors.

Working alongside Kubrick’s unique camera techniques was his use of sound and music. The classical soundtrack that Kubrick chose over Alex North’s original composition included Johann Strauss II’s waltz “An der schönen blauen Donau” (On The Beautiful Blue Danube) and Richard Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra). The “Blue Danube” theme guided the editing of the first space sequence to allude to the ballet-like nature of space travel and the camera movements that Kubrick used. The constant rotation and graceful movements timed to music are easily recognized in parodies of 2001, but the movements also appear in the science fiction films that followed. In Wall-E (2008) the same style of movement is combined during a space journey with an uplifting orchestra to create a sense of wonder. Brian de Palma’s Mission To Mars (2000) and Peter Hyam’s sequel to 2001, 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1987), both use the constantly revolving motion and a darker style of music to incite a feeling of unease. The power of music was important to Kubrick, who said, “A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.” (Thinkexist.com).

Most films today are very busy with sound, there’s dialogue constantly, there’s music that’s very dense with a big orchestra. 2001 is really at the opposite end of that kind of style where you have one sound at a time. (Burtt, Standing on…)

The way that Kubrick used sound effects in 2001 was as careful as the way he used music, colour, or camera movement. In the scene where HAL disconnects Frank Poole’s lifeline and abandons him to space the sound effects are not layered, as they would be in most films. Instead the sound effects come, as Ben Burtt says, “one sound at a time.” The effect of this is to build the rhythm of Poole’s breathing over a long stretch of time so that the audience forgets it is there, then create suspense by adding the hiss of the pod’s jets as it turns on Poole, and finally cut the breath of the audience by cutting the sound of Poole’s breathing at the moment of attack. Throughout the film Kubrick uses this technique of choosing to not use sound to great effect. When Bowman is locked out of the Discovery he must go through the emergency hatch and enter the airlock without a helmet. The sound effects built to a climax that never comes. Following the silence after HAL stops talking to Bowman, there are alarm bells and alert sounds as Bowman prepares the pod to release the emergency hatch. The alarms build and then the hatch blows. Bowman’s violent entry to the airlock is completely silent, which denies the expectation that the alarm bells created. This scene is another example of Kubrick following science rather than filmmaking convention. Because the vacuum of space has no air for sound waves to travel on, there would be no sound to hear. When Bowman closes the door and refills the room with oxygen the sound returns. This basic premise of no sound in space was one that did not break Hollywood’s habit. In Star Wars (1977) George Lucas and sound designer Ben Burtt include explosions and laser fire to create an exciting action film, and in most space-based films there are still sound effects in space – it is one of the few scientific flaws addressed by 2001 that still remain in common use. Exceptions that follow Kubrick do exist, however, in the form of Joss Whedon’s television series Firefly (2002) and the film adaptation Serenity (2005), where the sound of the ship’s engines are not heard until the ship enters the atmosphere of a planet.

The idea of following real science within science fiction was not considered before Kubrick’s film, but ever since it has become a major criterion for judging science-fiction films. Kubrick’s attention to reality in the model ships, the movement of large objects, the sound effects of space travel and space activity, and the problems of gravity and artificial gravity makes 2001: A Space Odyssey groundbreaking in terms of how it tells a story. Spielberg noted, “The way he told stories was sometimes antithetical to how we are accustomed to receiving stories,” (Standing on…) which captures the essence of 2001. Because the future is unknowable, and because the film is told in a unusual way, the feeling that Kubrick wanted to create is achieved. Kubrick tried to make a film that would suggest the future without stating it, and through his style of direction he accomplished that goal, and his work was so unique that no other filmmaker could approach his style successfully. Peter Hyam’s sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact and Steven Spielberg’s completed version of Kubrick’s unfinished screenplay A.I.: Artificial Intelligence were both critical failures. It was Kubrick’s unique sensibility and attention to detail that made each of his films the landmark achievements they were. 2001: A Space Odyssey was above all a technical masterpiece that set a new standard of achievement in science fiction and pioneered a new path to accomplishing that standard.

Works Cited

2001: A Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. 1968. DVD. Warner Brothers, 2001

2001: The Making of a Myth. Dir. Paul Joyce. Narrated by James Cameron. Channel Four, 2001.

Hill, Rob. 501 Must-See Movies [Science Fiction & Fantasy]. UK: Bounty Books, 2004

Kinn, Gail and Jim Piazza. The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 2002

Making of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. Dir. Laurent Bouzereau. DVD. Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, 2001.

Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001. Dir. Gary Leva. Interviewed: Ben Burtt, John Dykstra, Roger Ebert, Jan Harlan, Peter Hyams, George Lucas, Dennis Muren, Sydney Pollack, Steven Spielberg. Blu-Ray. Warner Brothers, 2007.

Thinkexist.com

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/a_film_is-or_should_be-more_like_music_than_like/218935.html. March 26, 2009.