What filmmaking techniques does Brazil use?

CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in Brazil (1985): Environmental Satire, Dream Logic Structure, Production Design as Psychological Space, Panoptic Space Design and Tonal Bifurcation.

Terry Gilliam directed Brazil, released in 1985. CineCode also covers Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Time Bandits (1981), The Fisher King (1991), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Brothers Grimm (2005).

What films are similar to Brazil?

Films that share techniques with Brazil include The Apartment (1960), The Lobster (2015), Synecdoche, New York (2008), Being John Malkovich (1999).

Science Fiction · Drama · Comedy

Brazil

Terry Gilliam, 1985

Sam Lowry is a low-level bureaucrat in a retro-futurist totalitarian state. He daydreams of being a winged hero while he tries to correct a clerical error that has destroyed an innocent man's family. Terry Gilliam's masterpiece sets Kafka's absurd paperwork against the look of Hollywood fantasy. I feel like the result is the 20th century's definitive satire of bureaucracy.

3 Narrative 2 Cinematography

At a glance

Brazil is a 1985 science fiction, drama and comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (3 narrative and 2 cinematography), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, The Apartment uses several of the same techniques.

Narrative

Environmental Satire

Mocking a specific world, such as an industry, an institution or consumer culture, by exaggerating what is already there. A sci-fi future built from present trends can do this with no direct argument.

How this film uses it

Gilliam's totalitarian state runs on paperwork, fights between departments and form-processing. It can't correct a clerical error, and it destroys anyone who draws attention to one. That is a precise satire of how a bureaucracy protects itself. The logic of the system is real. Gilliam only changed the scale.

Where to see it

The Buttle arrest and its aftermath. A clerical error becomes a murder. The bureaucracy can't admit fault because that would need a form no one is authorized to file.

Narrative

Dream Logic Structure

Arranging scenes the way a dream moves, where one image leads to the next by feeling or association. Events don't follow normal cause and effect.

How this film uses it

In his fantasies, Sam is a winged hero saving a woman from monsters and fighting battles in an endless sky. These sequences run on pure dream logic. They are surreal and they grant his wishes. The real world keeps breaking in and spoiling them more and more. As it tightens around Sam, his dreams become his only refuge and, in the end, the place he ends up.

Where to see it

Sam's escalating dream sequences. Samurai bureaucrats and giant faces spoil the heroic fantasy. The dreams show you how far the real world has pushed in.

Cinematography

Production Design as Psychological Space

Designing the sets to reflect what is going on inside a character. The place they live in tells you things about them that the dialogue doesn't.

How this film uses it

The Ministry of Information has ducts and pipes everywhere. Nobody can make sense of them, and rival technicians fight over who has the right to service them. This is the film's central idea in physical form. The system has grown past anything a human intended. It now keeps going on its own momentum while it eats the people who serve it.

Where to see it

The ductwork sequences. Tuttle does his unauthorized repairs alongside the rival Central Services technicians. The pipes become physical proof of how systems eat the people who serve them.

Cinematography

Panoptic Space Design

Designing a location so that everyone in it can be watched by a central authority at all times. Being constantly seen creates pressure and shows who has power over whom.

How this film uses it

Gilliam designs the Ministry so the institution can see everyone. There are open-plan offices where clerks watch each other, monitoring stations and interrogation rooms with their own special technology. This is panoptic design, where anyone can be watched at any time. It is fairly quiet about its oppression. It is simply how buildings look in a world where being watched is a condition of existing.

Where to see it

The Ministry of Information offices. You get the open-plan clerk galleries and the monitoring stations. In these buildings, everyone can see everyone else all the time.

Narrative

Tonal Bifurcation

Giving a film 2 very different tones, such as comedy and tragedy, often split into halves. Each makes the other hit harder, and the film never blends them into 1.

How this film uses it

Brazil keeps absurd comedy and real horror going at the same time. Bureaucratic slapstick shares scenes with torture, and shoppers' vanity shares space with state murder. Gilliam's control of tone makes the comedy more disturbing and the horror more exact. The system can't tell the difference between them either.

Where to see it

The Christmas shopping and the bombing. A mall full of holiday shoppers is hit by a terrorist bomb. Ordinary shopping and political violence sit close together. How close they sit to each other is the most disturbing point the film makes.

Questions

Brazil: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does Brazil use?: CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in Brazil (1985): Environmental Satire, Dream Logic Structure, Production Design as Psychological Space, Panoptic Space Design and Tonal Bifurcation.
Who directed Brazil?: Terry Gilliam directed Brazil, released in 1985. CineCode also covers Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Time Bandits (1981), The Fisher King (1991), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Brothers Grimm (2005).
What films are similar to Brazil?: Films that share techniques with Brazil include The Apartment (1960), The Lobster (2015), Synecdoche, New York (2008), Being John Malkovich (1999).

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