Brazil: 40 Years On

Four decades on, Terry Gilliam's dystopian masterpiece continues to impress

Credit: 20th Century Fox/Universal

I didn’t see Terry Gilliam’s dystopian satire Brazil (1985) in the cinema, but discovered it later, one night on a BBC2 screening in my early teens. A few people had told me they hated it, but I had the opposite reaction. The film blew my adolescent mind. It was vivid, bold, and bracingly bizarre. I wasn’t quite sure what it was about, nor did I understand all the reference points as I’d yet to read Nineteen Eighty-Four (or A Clockwork Orange — another key inspiration), but I loved the sublime strangeness of Gilliam’s lunatic fascist bureaucracy (hilariously set twenty minutes into the future). I also felt a curious affinity with the protagonist, Ministry of Information employee Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce).