Brazil: Where hearts were entertaining June

“Brazil,” by Terry Gilliam, is a 1985 science fiction noir film about the dystopian society of the future. The film follows the story of Sam Lowry, a government employee working at the Department of Records, a massive government bureaucratic organization that keeps records and track of all individuals in the "Brazil" society. The story revolves around the character Archibald Harry Buttle, who is mistaken as the terrorist engineer Archibald Harry Tuttle (played by Robert De Niro) and killed in custody. Jill Layton, a neighbor of Mr. Tuttle, tries to report this mistake to the Office of Information Retrieval (which is highly reminiscent of the Gestapo from both their uniform and tactics), but is instead marked as a terrorist herself for insisting the government made a mistake. Sam Lowry becomes obsessed about this woman because he keeps seeing her in his dreams, and as such he finally accepts a promotion to “The Department of Information Retrieval ” in order to get her classified information as well as clear the charges against her. However, Sam Lowry gets detained due to abusing his power, and is tortured at the end of the movie. The movie ends with him going crazy during torture and imagining that he escaped and lived a happier and simpler life in the countryside.

Although this film is primarily a critique of bureaucracy, the film also gives us a unique perspective on how the physical features of city actually reflect both the levels of corruption and inefficiency within a society. Near the beginning of the story, Sam Lowry goes to a fancy restaurant with his mother, and one of the noticeable features in the restaurant is the number of unsightly ventilation tubes snaking above the tables (as seen below).

Later in the movie, Tuttle explains that only the Central Services are allowed to work on ventilating systems, and as such the sloppy ventilating system visible in the restaurant is the work of Central Service Employees. This brings up an important idea that looking at a the physical characteristics of a city, especially the parts that the government runs, one can actually tell the efficiency of the government and the society as a whole. Thus, Just looking at the restaurant, one can already see the visible levels of bureaucratic and inefficient that plague the government. Another example of how the physical features of a city reflect its efficiency is shown when Sam goes to Jill’s apartment building. The camera first shows a propaganda poster, and the camera pans out after this shot to show a dirty and impoverished community, a reflection of the government’s inefficiency and the inequality rampant in the society(something which the masses are visibly displeased about, as shown in the pictures below).

Notice what is written over the H in Happiness on the picture below:

Notice the change as the camera shot above pans to the shot below:

The idea of using physical features to understand city works not only with the cities of “Brazil” but also with actual cities. For example when you look at a street in Austin, you can tell the presence the local government has in an area by observing subtle features like trash bins or street cleanliness (aka does the city of Austin Garbage Department regularly come by?) to more overt features like the nearness of police stations. Terry Gilliam uses these same techniques and features in his movie “Brazil,” albeit on grander scale than one would find in the real world.