Brazil (Matt)

This is a movie that I very much wanted to enjoy. All the cool kids love this movie, and I want to be a cool kid badly, oh yes I do. Sadly, however, it just isn't meant to be. I tried to like this move from every angle, and while there definitely are some aspects of it to like, overall it fell short of the glory it seems to have achieved from its viewing public.

Lets start with what I liked. I LOVED the world that the movie takes place in. It was dull and filled to the brim with greys, blacks, and whites. Just watching the sets will put you into a mood of claustrophobia and paranoia. There are ducts exposed in every public place, and this just adds to the sense of crowding that prevails throughout the movie.

I also enjoyed the sequences that took part I am assuming in the dreams of the main character. In these sequences he looks as though he is a warrior angel, and he is trying to rescue the love of his life from numerous obstacles such as a teleporting samurai or weird baby things that look like they came straight from The Dark Crystal. These always felt like a breath of fresh air when I saw them, and I was grateful every time that one appeared.

The acting I was not a fan of. I don't think this is the fault of the actors themselves as I am sure they were asked to portray these exaggerated personalities, and to their credit they did it quite well. I can see why the actors did this but all that it did was put me off of the movie. Every character save one (Robert De Niro playing Mr. Tuttle) grated on my nerves. The characters acted in ways that I did not understand, and as a result of this I was unable to relate to any of them. I spent the majority of the film trying to get into the film or at least to care about the characters to no avail. The only characters I really enjoyed were the angel manifestation of the main character and Mr. Tuttle.

I had a hard time following the story as well. I was able to understand the main plot but there were times where I got completely lost. I didn't understand what was happening, and when I did I did not understand why the characters where motivated to do what they were doing. A classic example of this occurs near the end of the film. The main character, Sam Lowry, is running away from a group of pursuers and stumbles into a funeral. He opens the casket and jumps inside it, causing him to fall into darkness for a while. The scene fades to black and then opens up again to him running outside in an alleyway. I for the life of me can't figure out why, when he was being chased, he would:

1) run into a funeral.
2) pull open the coffin
3) jump into the coffin

It just did not make sense. Later this is somewhat explained, but at the time it was so off-putting to me that it took me out of the film. My confusion caused me to completely lose interest several times in the movie and were I not watching it for this blog's sake, i would have likely turned it off.

In short, while this movie has a few redeeming qualities, I am not a fan. 3 botched plastic surgeries out of 10.