Question 3

I think the ambiguity of the time period in which Brazil is set is used to serve as added discourse to which the society is already facing. In Brazil, bombs going off during lunch and officials having power about a person's identity as well as the system that basically determines whether you live or die from a crime, is normal. The added confusion as to why the future appears much less futuristic compared to what was protrayed in other sci-fi films, adds to the disorientation felt by the film.

Something to keep in mind about Gilliam's decision, I found, was that maybe he didn't want to portray the future as something to be admired, like the advanced technology shown in The Matrix and in Things To Come.

Question 3

Like many people have said, Brazil takes place in this weird middle ground between past and future, leading me to believe that Brazil takes place much closer to the present than it seems. Due to this quasi-present time period, the audience automatically relates to the characters, plot points, and the world Gilliam has created in the film. As we have talked about before, a film that is relatable is a fail-proof way to get the point across to the audience with ease, and I think this is why Gilliam chooses this "generally identifiable yet also quite specific" time period. The audience better understands Sam's madness because we pick out similarities between his life and our own; the bureaucracy and red tape often seem at odds with common sense, technology creates unforeseeable problems, and Sam goes to great lengths to protect the woman he loves. Because of the similarities between Brazil's present and our own, we sympathize with Sam and are more likely to see him as a man giving up his career and life for another person rather than a spurned government employee who defrauds his country.
I have not seen The Matrix so I cannot make an educated point about the use of the future in the film. However, I have seen CJ and Nehemaiah's version of the film, so if I were to comment on what the audience gets from their representation of the future, I would say that the future looks a whole lot like Bethesda. 

Hey guess what? I'm answering question 3 now. Get excited.

I think that the use of the whole past/future mix thing helped to ground the movie a bit with recognizable elements.  It shows that even though technology advances, we never really get out of certain ideas and styles and that even though it has become more extreme, some things never change.  In a movie that is so "out there" and strange and kind of confusing, it helps to see recognizable elements  like  TV screens.  It also adds to the inefficiency of everything.  We got the sense that the world in which they live is highly inefficient to the point where it is incredibly frustrating to the viewer (and to the characters).  I therefore find it interesting that the technology is old, because one of the reasons that technology advances so much and so quickly is to make things easier and more efficient.  Rarely does technology evolve to slow things down or make them harder to use (that would never sell!)  In many other sci-fi films, the future is usually portrayed as being kind of sleek and glossy and minimalist for a reason; it is easier, cleaner, and more efficient.  If you look at technology now, it progressed the same way- just look at the iphone.  I think iphones look like something out of a science fiction movie.  In the Brazil, the use of the old technology shows that things have kind of come to one giant bureaucratic stalemate in which nothing can ever or will ever change.  

Sci-Fi Without a Defined Time

The movie Brazil sits in a time that is neither past nor present. I think that being in a specific time (such as being clearly in the future) would hurt the film. The film is not meant to be a prediction for the future, it is not a prophecy of "Things to Come" (Get it? I referenced another movie we watched). By being set in a time with a mixture of past and present, the technology that runs throughout the movie is clearly visible and more relatable to the audience. In a sci-fi movie, we expect the technology to be more advanced, less intrusive, to fit with what’s around it better. Brazil is the complete opposite: duct work crosses the rooms, the computers are bulky and have typewriter-style keyboards, and the car looks uncomfortably small. All this is done to draw our attention to the technology and to emphasize how it actually, in the case of this film, makes many things more difficult. If the movie had a clearly set date in the future, we might look at it as more of a prediction, dismissing what is shown because we think it is an inaccurate prediction. But by not actually being a prediction of the future, the world in the film can be interpreted as an allegory, taken to the extremes to better representing a universal theme.

Question 三

Gilliam's setting Brazil in a future-past kind of middle ground reminds me of the ending of The Great Gatsby which says "so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past". I feel that Gilliam was making a statement about how we can never escape our past just as Fitzgerald was. Gilliam's is less direct about making the point but I feel that Sam's madness stems from his attempt to escape his loyal worker background. By leaving his old workplace Sam gets caught up in his dream about Jill and keeps trying to push his past back and follow his dreams. Eventually Sam himself becomes an enemy of the state leading to his final delusional state somewhat like Gatsby's death.

As a note on The Matrix vs Brazil I feel that The Matrix is more directed at machines than Brazil as the latter pertains more to humans working like machines for a common "good" which is a flawless society. In The Matrix the futuristic technology surrounding the film makes me feel like it's more about humans being used by machines rather than humans turning into the machines themselves.

Question 3

The future no matter how evolutionary or how many new technologies are introduced retains some sense of the past, (as an example I realized only a few days ago that “Car” is short for “Carriage”), especially when attempting to communicated with audiences from a screen.  Having elements that are recognizable, not only make the material presented easier to understand but easier to perceive as probable and easier to criticize, because remains of the past or present are found.

Brazil’s wonderful dark humor, which arguably is one of Britain’s greatest exports, serves to ridicule things such as perception of beauty (plastic surgery), over-industrialization of food (what are we really eating? At the restaurant), and of course the freedom of citizens (the bureau in a very “big Brother” persona) along many others. Things such as the over-indulgence of paper work, the liberty of the government in “protecting” its citizens, and the importance of stature can already be perceived in our time, which makes Gilliam’s ironic views that much more comprehensible.

When contemplating The Matrix to Brazil, The Matrix does have a much more serious approach, and at the same time because it includes so many objects and technologies that are unrecognizable it makes it harder to approach or to find it believable. One of the reasons why I found Brazil to be incredible interesting was because I didn’t find it that difficult to believe/imagine, a world over ruled by an organization controlling its citizens to the letter, cluttered in paper work and bureaucracy? It’s already happening.

ON that note I do wish to comment on the ending of the film. While we as the audience see it as a very negative ending concluding with our dear protagonist lost in a delusion, someone pointed out to me that at the very end, hasn’t he “won”? Even if its insanity that has liberated him, he is free; he no longer belongs to the system even if only in his own mind.

(P.S. I think this is ONLY film I have enjoyed so far, Blade Runner will be the end of me…)

QUESTION 3 - Gabriel Rodriguez-Fuller

As stated in the question, most sci-fi films tend to look "unapologetically forward". What is unique about Brazil is that it looks unapologetically at the present. The world of the film is so familiar in its details that it appears as an exaggeration of modernization as of 1985, rather than a look at "things to come". Sure, it can be viewed as a look at where the world is heading, but there are countless deliberate touches (such as the opening text "somewhere in the 20th century") that hint at Gilliam's true intention. Satire. As Sam is driving to give a check to Miss Buttle, for instance, old and withered billboards of 50's housing developments are shown. Whenever the film takes place, it is certainly familiar to '85, where the domestic ideals of the 50's were long gone and forgotten. In Buttle's neighborhood, young children play around with high powered firearms. By 1985, teen gang violence, gun violence, and similar phenomenon were already occurring, so by placing guns in the hands of elementary school children, Gilliam is clearly exaggerating the present. There are countless other images that meaningfully contribute to this satire of the modern world:

-All of the plastic surgery

-The office dynamic of information retrieval (uniformity and ass-kissing)

-The unjust killing of Buttle and the priority of order over justice

-In the mall bombing, mannequins are mixed in with dying people (desensitization)

-All of the pipes and tubes (the world is powered by incomprehensible technology that functions less than perfectly)

-Sam's dreams show his inner conflict in this world (he wants to fight "the man", but who is "the man"? Himself? He reaches towards Jill, but the cries of those whom he and the government gas wronged keep him conflicted.)

A particularly potent image is that the road out of the city in which the film takes place (I don't believe it has a name, which contributes to its allegorical nature) is lined with billboards showing pretty landscapes, completely blocking the view out towards a barren dessert which stretches indefinitely. This is perhaps the second most powerful example of the denial that is required to live in such a world. The foremost example is, of course, the song, "Brazil". We hear it most clearly when Sam is escaping in one way or another, primarily in his fantasies. The nostalgic tune from the 30s brings back imagined memories of a sunny past, completely unlike the present that Sam exists in. At the end of the film, Sam is essentially declared brain dead, or completely insane. The long-gone man in the torture chair weakly hums the tune of Brazil to himself, holding on to imagined peace and warmth as torture has further removed his reality from such an ideal. Delusion is all he has, and in retrospect, all he ever had.

A word about the matrix: The matrix itself (the illusion, the faux reality) is familiar, yes, but once Keanu has seen the light the real world appears entirely different from our reality. The idea that machines rule humanity is interesting, and perhaps even somewhat realistic, but as of 1999 it still probably felt quite a ways off. "That won't happen for a while." The human v. robot dynamic in the film mainly serves to fuel the action sequences, and the real thematic meat lies elsewhere. The Matrix is more about reality than about technology, let alone modernization. It's a discussion of perception with robots in it. By having "the matrix" perfectly resemble our reality, the films makes us question what we consider real. Now of course, we won't leave the theater genuinely concerned about being in a computer program, being grown as robot fuel, but we will question what we see and become aware of how limited our perception really is, in a grand and pure sense, detached from the plot of the movie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave