C&C 82: Return I Will to Old Brazil

A new restoration of a movie that mattered to me

For a variety of reasons, chief among them work¹ and the ongoing shitshow that is 21^st century American life, I find myself revisiting art that made an impact in my youth. Personally prelapsarian stuff. Partly it’s the comfort that familiarity brings. Mainly it’s a psychic urge to return to a time when I felt optimistic. About my future, the world’s future, the concept of the future in general. Hope has been in short supply lately, but it’s a self-generated resource. You’ve got to create it to feel it. Going back to an era when hope was abundant—when my classmates and I were preparing for college, poised to enter the adult world and set that place on its ear—might spur me to produce a little of it now. And I’m not talking about masterpieces here. Some of my happiest moments of 2025 include going to a theater to let David Lynch’s Dune (1984) wash over me in all its lunatic glory and settling down with Throw Momma from the Train (1987) for the first time in ages.

When Seattle’s Grand Illusion Cinema, currently in itinerant mode as it raises funds for a new home near the University of Washington, teamed up with SIFF Cinema for screenings of the new fortieth-anniversary 4K restoration of Brazil (1985), I bought tickets at once. Correction: a ticket. I knew I had to see the movie solo. Brazil was a foundational work for me, and I wanted to reexperience it by myself. Of course, I wasn’t only looking back at the movie. I was also spending time with the adolescent me, who for a while made Brazil part of his personality. Maybe he’d have something useful to tell me. Maybe he’d give me hope.

Noir and then: Jonathan Pryce in Brazil

As a fan of Monty Python and Time Bandits (1981), I had followed co-writer/director Terry Gilliam’s battle against Universal Pictures to have his film released uncut. His campaign required skullduggery, the tactics not only successful but of a piece with the movie’s themes. In February 1986, Gilliam’s jet-black dystopian comedy finally opened in south Florida, where I was attending high school against my will. I didn’t have a car, so I told my older sister I’d pay for her ticket if she drove me to the Clearwater 5.² I went twice more during its brief run, dragging different friends each time to the story of a timid bureaucrat (Jonathan Pryce) in a totalitarian state jolted out of complacency because of a fatal paperwork error, an air conditioning mishap, and an encounter with his (literal) dream woman.³

I received the videotape of Brazil as a gift that Christmas, because I wouldn’t shut up about the movie. I shoehorned references to it into multiple college essays, no matter the subject. I read and reread Jack Mathews’ behind-the-scenes account The Battle of Brazil (1987). For Christmas 1999, Rosemarie gave me Criterion’s deluxe 3-disc set containing every cut of the film.

From the St. Petersburg Times, February 7, 1986

But a curious thing can happen to your relationship with the touchstones of your youth. Some of them retain their hold, burnished by time. You grow distant from others. Your sensibilities change. Or you become embarrassed by the depth of feeling you possessed in that bristling, leather-jacket phase of life, your passion like a tattoo that you now regret and routinely cover up.

When I watched Brazil in my late thirties, I only noticed the seams. The dream sequences seemed clunky and obvious. The pacing dragged. The parts of the movie that resonated weren’t Gilliam’s visual jokes and flights of fancy and barely-contained rage, but the structure imposed on the chaos by playwright Tom Stoppard, the simple but devastating conceit of a citizen mistaken for a terrorist by the government, with no one willing to acknowledge the error, resenting the inconvenient demands for justice.

I couldn’t let the film’s fortieth—fortieth!—anniversary pass unremarked. I owed the movie too much.

Brazil is destined to play differently in 2025 America. I knew that going in. But I wasn’t prepared for how differently. Masked troops disappearing people without explanation. Random violence accepted as routine. Robert DeNiro’s heating engineer branded an enemy of the state for doing his job efficiently. And everywhere, individuals turning a blind eye to acts of oppression—at times tacitly participating in them—by blaming the system, willingly ignoring that they, and countless individuals like them, are the system.

Jill (Kim Greist) would like to speak with your manager

The dream sequences still don’t work. Some of the jokes have dated. Others now cut even deeper. There are aspects of the movie I didn’t appreciate when I first saw it. I knew nothing about film noir then, so Gilliam’s use of its iconography was lost on me. A shot of Pryce emerging from the shadows in a trench coat and fedora that could have been out of an RKO film from 1947 made me gasp audibly in the dark.

When the movie ended, I sat there, processing it. Half in the 1980s, half in the now.

It’s a perennial question: what advice would you offer your younger self? But neophytes have wisdom to share as well. Time occasionally flows in both directions. You can place a message in a bottle and toss it into the future, trusting it will wash ashore when you need it. I hate that Brazil is relevant in a way that it wasn’t in 1985. But I’m glad that it exists as a warning, and that brooding teenaged me decided to pay attention to it.

What (Else) I’m Watching

Speaking of what I loved in my youth, my affection for Billy Joel is longstanding and without irony. Maybe it’s a Queens thing. So of course I subjected myself to all five hours of Billy Joel: And So It Goes (HBO). The documentary tends toward hagiography but serves as a reminder of how many good songs Joel has written, and why they’ve lasted. Toward the conclusion, critics observe that Joel is unique among rock stars of his age because his songs make more sense when performed by someone older. These comments are followed by archival footage of Joel on the day he signed with Columbia Records in 1973. The scruffy 24-year-old launches into “Piano Man,” about lonely souls coming to grips with their dreams not coming true, the narrator himself in that company. It’s a potent juxtaposition.

What disappointed me was the dearth of New York Mets content. Long Island boy Joel is a huge fan of the team, and “Piano Man” is played as an anthem at the games. Fortunately, there’s another entire documentary on the subject: The Last Play at Shea (2010), which is guaranteed to reduce me to rubble, just like Shea Stadium in the film.

Sticking to music documentaries, I went into Devo (Netflix) knowing only a handful of their songs and the fact that they were Johnny Slash’s ninth favorite band on Square Pegs. I kept waiting for “Dare to Be Stupid” until I remembered that was Weird Al Yankovic’s note-perfect tribute to the band’s style. But the point of Weird Al’s song is also consistent with Devo’s philosophy of de-evolution, which was deep and well-thought-out, forged by the band members’ experiences at Kent State University during and after the infamous shootings in 1970. Chris Smith directs, and as he proved with American Movie (1999) he has an affinity for Midwestern misfits. Sure, Devo turned up on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman but they also took gigs where you wouldn’t expect to see new wave acts, performing on Merv Griffin’s and Mike Douglas’s daytime shows because they wanted housewives to be exposed to the band. More of that inclusive subversion would be welcome. And “Freedom of Choice” and “Through Being Cool” remain bangers with great videos.

1. Including an exciting new book project I will be disclosing shortly

2. In the interest of accuracy, I actually attended high school in Dunedin, Florida. Go Falcons!

3. That role is played by Kim Greist, in only her second film. During production she and Gilliam clashed repeatedly. Greist didn’t make many movies before stepping away from acting in 2001. But in a three-year span, she appeared in a trio of titles that landed hard with me: Brazil, Manhunter (1986), the first Hannibal Lecter—sorry, Lecktor—movie, and Throw Momma from the Train. In my mind, she’s up there with Kathleen Turner as one of the leading ladies of the 1980s.