• One Scene: Brazil

    By Brian K. Vaughan

    I first saw Brazil thanks to the sweet laserdisc box set belonging to my spoiled film-school roommate Jeff Yorkes (now an editor of much acclaim). I remember thinking that the movie had nothing resembling a consistent tone, pinballing from broad physical comedy to bleak social commentary, sometimes in the same shot. I loved it. Outside of Alan Moore comics, I’d never seen a story with so much anger stuffed so cleverly into so many images. No surprise that Gilliam and Moore both worship iconoclastic Mad magazine founder Harvey Kurtzman.

    Anyway, the following clip is probably one of the less egregious deletions from the butchered “Love Conquers All” edit, which was the studio-imposed version, complete with happy ending. It’s just a quick sequence of Jonathan Pryce’s character leaving the safety of his bureaucratic cocoon to deliver a check to the widow of a man detained and tortured by the government after mistakenly ending up on a terrorist watch list. (I know, right?)

    Barely a scene, this is one of those thankless transitions that shows how our protagonist gets from point A to point B. It doesn’t really advance the narrative or reveal new information about characters. In old-timey screenwriting parlance, it’s just “shoe leather.”

    But look at this leather!

    One Scene: Brazil One Scene: Brazil

    The intro of Sam Lowry’s vehicle is old-school Monty Python hilarious, but I’ll never forget the revelation of Shangri-La Towers, which is at first really funny and then almost immediately kind of depressing. Talk about world building. Even when the different elements of the filmmaking seem to be operating at cross-purposes, the jaunty score, battered set design, and sumptuous cinematography somehow work in concert to make this absurd future feel not just plausible but likely. And that poster behind the kids looks like it was stolen from 2011.

    This entire little journey could have been handled with a cheaper/easier/saner dissolve, but instead, like with every scene in Brazil, we get something epic and unexpected and beautiful.

    Brian K. Vaughan is a writer of graphic novels and for television. He received five Eisner Awards for the comic book series Y: The Last Man.

    Video, One Scene, Web Exclusives

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10 comments

  • By Si
    October 19, 2011
    12:19 PM

    One great creative mind speaking about another, awesome stuff
    Reply

  • By Kevin
    October 19, 2011
    01:09 PM

    I didn't care for this film when I saw it in college, but Brian has inspired me to take another look!
    Reply

  • By LifeofFiction
    October 19, 2011
    02:17 PM

    This is my second favorite film of all time! If Criterion were to blu-ray it, I would buy it for 100$
    Reply

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    • By Alex
      December 22, 2012
      12:37 PM

      Well your wait is over and you don't have to buy it for 100 dollars....i guess it's your lucky day! lol

  • By Russel Harmon
    October 19, 2011
    02:57 PM

    My fingers have been crossed since the advent of blu-ray for Criterion to release this. That and Baron, and Time Bandits and Fisher King...But we've got Fear and Loathing. So that's a start!
    Reply

  • By Bed Bath and Bubonic
    October 19, 2011
    05:59 PM

    At last, that film degree has paid off!
    Reply

  • By David Hollingsworth
    October 20, 2011
    06:40 PM

    I have never seen this film, but telling by the great scene above, I really wish I had.
    Reply

  • By KenA
    October 21, 2011
    06:08 PM

    I fell in love with this film the moment Brazil starting parodying the silliness rampant in bureaucratic culture. My graduate friends adored it but my mother, a career government supervisor, abhored it and wondered about my sanity watching "crap". Happy to see Criterion was inspired also. Great social satire and commentary, though long in the tooth in places.
    Reply

  • By dasboot4211
    November 13, 2011
    07:58 PM

    This scene in Brazil was in the previews of a movie I went to see back in the 1980's when Brazil first came out. I forgot the movie I went to see but I always remembered the preview and that one shot at the towers. The next year I started working at a video store and the first video I rented on VHS was, you guest it, Brazil which I was not let down. And through out the years of Brazil's incarnations of un-cut, added scenes at the theater and dvd and Criterion versions I have never felt disappointed at this masterpiece of madness. Thank you Terry Gilliam for the one image that changed my cinema going and movie making life.
    Reply

  • By Sean
    November 12, 2012
    04:31 AM

    Now this is what America needs! Only problem is that the stupid people of Hollywood of today's times would edit stuff out of a film like this due to 9/11 just sad wish we could make fun of our government in today's movies if there was one I would watch it trust me I would.
    Reply

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