YMMV / Brazil

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Lowry is an irresponsible idiot who chooses to live for himself instead of helping others like Tuttle. This incidentally is supported by Gilliam himself who feels that Lowry should be seen critically as someone who was fine with the system and indifferent to the harm it inflicted until it personally affected him and whose revolt is without ideology, driven by romance and Oedipus Complex and a need to be a Heroic Wannabe rather than commit to actual reform or revolt:
    Terry Gilliam: The film is about responsibility and he’s not taking responsibility for the job he does. He’s right at the heart of the ministry and the ministry is this monstrous thing and he’s busy daydreaming. So, that was just my comment about all people.
  • As described below under Nightmare Retardant, Jack Lint's obsession with "just doing his job" has been interpreted by some people as him not wanting to torture his best friend, and therefore deliberately inducing Sam's visions somehow, effectively lobotomizing him and allowing him to peacefully die with delusions of a happy ending rather than suffer horribly under torture to get information for the regime. Which, in a funny way, would make Jack as much of a rebel as Sam, if not more so.
• Award Snub: It received two Academy Award nominations (Best Original Screenplay and Art Direction), but it wasn't nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actor, or Score. (The very famous public battle Gilliam had with Universal Studios over his preferred cut of the film meant Universal wasn’t going to be actively campaigning for it come awards season.)
• Awesome Music: Michael Kamen's music for the film has come to be a go-to theme for "Drone-like worker learns there's more to life" stories.
• Crazy Is Cool: Harry Tuttle, Robert De Niro is clearly having a blast playing a Bomb Throwing Anarchist.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • An innocent man being dragged away by a squad of government Mooks during the middle of a bedtime story is horrifying, but the lead officer making the man's widow sign several forms and giving her a receipt for the prisoner distracts the audience from the horror.
  • There's a kindly-looking stenographer outside the interrogation room cheerfully transcribing the screams and begging of various prisoners.
• Cult Classic: Upon release the film was not a huge hit, but it quickly gained a lot of attention over time and is considered a science fiction classic, with many being inspired by its tone and set design when depicting a vast or obstructive bureaucracy.
• Ending Fatigue: Terry Gilliam planned on the ending getting bigger and bigger, more and more romantic, and just wilder until it just got painful... and was subverted with a massive Bittersweet Ending. The Love Conquers All version cuts the subversion.
• Heartwarming Moments: The complete collector's set of Brazil includes all versions of the film, including the "Love Conquers All" cut, because Gilliam acknowledges that version is the favorite version for some people (it did play on TV in certain U.S. markets), and it would be unfair for them not to see it, and also it allows scholars to compare every version. (And show how right he was.)
• He's Just Hiding: Even though the ending where Jill turns out to be alive and rescues Lowry is a delusion, her Sound-Only Death can make it possible to hope that she really did survive and the government is lying about her death to demoralize Lowry.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: It won't be the last time Bob Hoskins will star in a movie with a heroic mustached plumber in a dystopian setting.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Brazil is popular among the American Right, which Gilliam himself has said puzzles him. It was also beloved by some people living in the Iron Curtain at the time (who saw the film via bootleg copies) who perceived the film as anti-leftist even though Gilliam himself is a liberal who was critical of Reagan and Thatcher (both of whom were heroes behind the Iron Curtain). The film includes scathing satire of consumerism and authoritarianism, and one of its working titles was So That's Why the Bourgeoisie Sucks. And in actual Communist regimes, Christmas festivities as depicted in the movie would be banned outright on religious and economic grounds.
  • It's quite possible that the reason it's interpreted as a conservative movie is that some viewers could see Sam's struggles with the government and bureaucracy as something coming off of an Ayn Rand novel. And since the movie is riffing partly on George Orwell its anti-authoritarian story could be read, and has been read as anti-communist (and Orwell himself has been co-opted quite successfully by the right-wing). Part of the problem is that leftwingers and rightwingers tend to employ Personal Dictionary around "capitalism", with leftwingers preferring to lump in corporatist fascism like the system depicted in the film under that definition, while rightwingers see the free market as inherently anti-government and an alliance of "Big Capital" and "Big Government" as a perversion (if not outright rejection) of liberal market principles.
  • Terry Gilliam noted in interview with the film magazine Senses of Cinema, that he was himself often ambivalent about authority and community, noting that while he disliked Thatcher's crackdown of the unions, he wasn't a big fan of the unions or their tactics either, so Brazil is supposed to have a wide Applicability, and its general anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian sentiment and fantasy has good appeal to people across the political spectrum.
• Nightmare Retardant: On purpose. A Torture Technician in a grimy baby mask would be terrifying if he wasn't moaning and hesitant over having to interrogate one of his best friends, going so far as to find a tool that will hurt the least. It's implied that Jack even does something to Sam to evoke this trope more directly, rendering him braindead so he won't have to suffer much in the way of real pain or terror.
• Retroactive Recognition: Jim Broadbent is Dr. Louis Jaffe, Mrs. Lowry's plastic surgeon.
• Sliding Scale of Social Satisfaction: On the "Knowledge is Forbidden". Specifically, knowledge about the devastated outside world and the barely-functioning nature of the government, which, by the way, is highly controlling as well.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Generally considered a better adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four than the actual film adaptation by Michael Radford (which is considered a good movie admittedly). Gilliam noted that he didn't read George Orwell's book but he knew about it via Pop-Cultural Osmosis and updated it with late-20th Century concerns.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The film's original title was Nineteen Eighty-Four ½. Similar to the 1984 film adaptation of 1984, the film contains an important fantasy sequence involving green hills.
    • This title also formed a Shout-Out to Federico Fellini's film 8½, which contains similar dream sequences.
  • This was the second part of the "Dreamer Trilogy": Time Bandits represents childhood, Brazil represents adulthood, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen represents old age.
• Tear Jerker: Oh, lord that ending where it turns out Sam is still a prisoner and just dreaming!
  • Also, the scene where Sam "refunds" Mrs. Buttle for her husband is pretty gut-wrenching.
  Mrs. Buttle: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIS BODY?!
  • The little girl who says that she is waiting for her father to come home and Sam realizes that is Buttle's daughter.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: This movie is basically a Philip K. Dick story on happy pills. Note that PKD is already pretty spacey.
• Vindicated by History: Initially unable to live up to the hype surrounding it (mostly concerning Gilliam's battle to get the proper version into theaters) and losing money at the box office, Brazil has joined the ranks of Dr. Strangelove and Fargo as one of the most memorable dark comedies of all time and one of the greatest science-fiction films ever made.
  • Its screenplay was nominated for an Oscar and critics back in the day loved it. It was just released under a cloud and the studio hated the fact Gilliam humiliated them by forcing them to release his cut. So it wasn't widely seen originally, but that's certainly changed due to its massive cult following.
• Woobie Family: The Buttles, given how the father is arrested and killed over a misunderstanding during the middle of a bedtime story and the rest of the family achingly await his return, only to learn that he's dead.

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