12. Miscellaneous Questions, Answers, and Observations. (Brazil - Movie, 1985)
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This article is from the Brazil - Movie, 1985 FAQ, by David S. Cowen davec@earth.execpc.com with numerous contributions by others.
12. Miscellaneous Questions, Answers, and Observations. (Brazil - Movie, 1985)
Q. What kind of car did Sam drive to deliver the refund check?
A. It's a Messerschmidt. Gilliam obtained two from a collector's club
in order to shoot the film, one of which was destroyed for the scene
at Shangri-La Towers.
Q. What does Jack Lint's little girl say to Sam after Jack leaves?
A. "Put it on, big boy. I won't look at your willy." Holly, the
little girl, is Gilliam's daughter Holly Gilliam.
Q. Who is Sam's mother played by in the scene at Mrs. Terrain's funeral?
A. Its Kim Greist, who plays Jill Layton. Gilliam shot footage with both
Greist and Katherine Helmond playing the part, and decided to use the
footage of Greist with Helmond's voice dubbed in. However, if you look
closely, the last shot of Sam's mother _is_ Katherine Helmond.
Q. Who is the rock man supposed to represent?
A. Sam's boss at the Department of Records, Kurtzmann.
Q. Who does Sam find when he lifts the faceplate of the Samurai?
A. Himself, which lends itself to the Quixotic nature of Sam's quest.
The samurai is a huge, monolithic, powerful machine, and is assumed
to represent technology -- and Sam finds his own participation
in the machinations of this technologically based society to be a
hindrance to his own self.
Gilliam hinted, during a recent Q & A session on America Online,
that the Samurai may simply be a bad pun. The word samurai, divided
into syllables, sounds like the phrase "Sam or I"... and later,
Gilliam mentioned that it could mean, "Sam, you are I".
Q. Why the hideous masks, like the one Jack Lint wears for the
interrogation?
A. Gilliam's mother once sent him a mask like that, and it haunted him ever
since. Gilliam intended the effect of combining the masks and the
decaying bodies of the Forces of Darkness (the small, troll-like
creatures which Sam sees in his dreams) to be an intermingling of the
beginning and ends of life.
Q. Does Gilliam cameo in the film?
A. Gilliam himself appears as one of the lurkers in Shangri-La towers, the
one belching smoke as he runs into Sam. The lurkers were put in the
script to get the idea across that people were being arbitrarily picked
out for surveillance.
Q. How is the song "Brazil" used in the movie?
A. As well as frequently occurring as a theme in the orchestral soundtrack,
the song Brazil is hummed by Tuttle as he puts the panel back inside
Sam's apartment, and by Sam as he folds up Mrs. Buttle's check and puts
it in the pneumatic delivery tube. A few notes of the song are played
by the keypad as Sam punches in "EREIAMJH" in Mr. Helpmann's lift.
Q. Are there any references to other films in BRAZIL?
A. Past the obvious reference to Casablanca, there are two scenes which
are familiar to film buffs. The first is the opening dolly shot of the
clerk's pool at the Department of Records, intended as homage to
Stanley Kubrick, who used a similar dolly shot in _Paths of Glory_.
An even more striking similarity is during the scene where Lowry and
Tuttle escape from Information Retrieval. The actions of the soldiers
in this scene, marching mechanically in time and lowering their rifles,
mirrors shot-for-shot a famous scene in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. The scene
in the Russian classic takes place on the steps of Odessa, portraying
a glimpse of the Russian revolution. In POTEMKIN, we have a baby
carriage rolling down the stairs in the midst of battle, while in
BRAZIL, we have a floor polisher going down the stairs -- the operator,
like the mother in POTEMKIN, is shot in a similar fashion
This famous scene is also alluded to in THE UNTOUCHABLES, during the
famous train station stand-off, and was re-drawn for _Stick Figure
Theatre_ on MTV's _Liquid Television_. Zbigniew Rybczynski's short film
STEPS is all about what happens when modern day tourists get to walk
around in this famous film sequence. Many other films have used
referenced POTEMKIN, as well.
Q. Why does Mrs. Terrain disintegrate over the course of the film?
A. Mrs Terrain reveals in the restaurant bombing sequence that she is
seeing Mr. Chapman for cosmetic surgery, also known as "the acid man".
From the gelatinous, bony mess found in her coffin, we can assume
the acid treatment was ultimately unsuccessful. Gilliam, on the
Criterion collection set in his commentary, mentions that his father
had used an "acid man" to treat a growth on his ear... and that the
acid ate through his father's entire ear!
Q. Are any of the character's names significant?
A. Mr Kurtzmann (German for `short man') stands for small in stature and
success. Named after the editor of _Help_ (Harvey Kurtzman), a
magazine that Gilliam worked for in the mid-60s. It was at a photo
shoot for this magazine that Gilliam met John Cleese, who would later
invite him to join the Monty Python team.
Mr Warrenn works in a rabbit-warren style place: a maze of corridors.
Dr. Chapman, "the acid man" responsible for Mrs. Terrain's
deteriorating condition, may be an allusion to fellow Pythoner
Graham Chapman, who studied as a doctor.
Q. What is the tool that Jack Lint uses during Sam's interrogation?
A. It is a device used to perform a frontal lobotomy. It is inserted
through the nose and then pushed up to sever the frontal lobe. It
can be assumed through the context of the film that Sam has been
lobotomized by the end of the film.
Q. What is the gift Sam keeps getting and giving?
A. An executive decision maker, a novelty gift in the Spencer's Gifts vain:
it has a plunger that can fall to one side of a divider, landing on
"YES" or "NO". The toy is of no value in the film...commentary on the
knee-jerk giving of useless gifts at Christmastime, and the
commercialization of the holiday. The gift in real life was more
expensive...it cost 2000 dollars to design and make for the film.
Q. What does "'ere I am, J.H." mean?
A. It's obviously an anagram of "Jeremiah". However, the phrase is
slightly puzzling: Jeremiah (the anagram of "EREIAMJH") was Sam
Lowry's late father, so we can assume his initials were J.L.
Helpmann's initials, seen earlier in the tag on a present, are G.H.
(for Gene Helpmann). So, who's J.H.?
Q. How were the flying sequences filmed?
A. "We used either close ups of Jonathan....and the rest of the shots
were done on this model. This thing was so good we were able to come
in very close on it and still fool the camera. This whole thing was
connected by wires to a battery that was then run on a huge track. To
make it look like the size of a human being you've gotta slow the
thing down so we shot it at 4 or 5 times normal speed and the operator
trying to follow this thing was in a terrible state. We'd set this
whole thing up and the clouds would get going and we'd shout "Action!"
and it would go Wham! and then this thing would fly through the air
"Berrrrrap!" and that was it and it would take us another hour to set
it up again. By the end of the day you wouldn't know what you'd
achieved, but come the next morning, you saw the rushes and the film
slowed down to the right speed...it's fantastic, you saw this
incredibly graceful, soaring, sweeping figure. That's what we
ended up with on film."
- Terry Gilliam, The South Bank Show, 6/29/91
Additional information:
Two of Lowry's "rescuers" are wearing comic masks -- one wearing a Father
Christmas mask, the other Pluto.
There are references to Egyptology in Ida Lowry's decor, and the brooch she
wears, the beetle, is the Egyptian symbol for eternal life. The "shoe hat"
she wears is based on an actual design from the 30's.
Ducts are pervasive throughout the film. These symbolize both the
umbilical relationship of the people to their centralized government and
the loss of aesthetics in our cities.
When Sam fights with Jill to get her parcel off her (in the lingerie
dept.) his head gets pressed against a mirror. For a brief second before
the next shot, the film gets reversed (or flipped from left to right).
Spiro loses his French accent after the bomb goes off in the restaurant.
This funny dialogue is not heard in the American Theatrical/Video
release.
Gilliam tested more than a half-dozen actresses to play the part of Jill,
interviewing or testing Jamie Lee Curtis, Rebecca De Mornay, Rae Dawn
Chong, Joanna Pakula, Rosanna Arquette, Kelly McGillis, Ellen Barkin, and
even considering Madonna. Gilliam's personal favorite was Ellen Barkin.
There was a reference to BRAZIL on Simpsons episode [1F07]: The Last
Temptation of Homer, originally aired on December 9th, 1993. Department
of labor workers slide in from the top of the screen on wires in a
manner very similar to Sam's rescue scene in the torture chamber. The
Brazilian soccer team is mentioned soon afterward. In the same
episode, Lisa steps out of a clam shell a la BARON MUNCHAUSEN.
Several readers recall seeing a Federal Express ad that parodied BRAZIL,
namely the scenes with Mr. Warrenn in Information Retrieval.
Several readers recall seeing a version of the Sheinberg "Love Conquers
All" edit that contained a clip of Casablanca, and the line "You look
like you've seen a ghost, Sam," neither of which are present on the
Criterion disc.
Many posters to rec.arts.movies.* and alt.cult-movies have intimated that
BRAZIL is a modern-day crucifixtion story. We see stigmata on Sam Lowry's
hand after his lobotomy at the end of the movie.
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