DrabFuture: TF Watches 'Brazil' (1985)

Monty Python britianology when?

I did used to like this film but hearing you speak about it has made me realise just how much its rooted in the 80s and Thatcherism. There really was a hatred of nationalised industries, of unions, of "unearnt" social superiority, of red tape, and crap British manufacturing. But they didn't know we were going to sell every national asset and end up with everything being worse, which is funny. The attitude to cosmetic surgery is also very reminiscent of Tom Wolfe's social x-rays and the sneering at rich republican women for starving and tweaking themselves. Which is the wrong reason to criticise them. I really like Terry Gilliam's aesthetic but he does often leave a nasty taste. So, Twelve Monkeys then?

Would you say that those of us who get bonus episodes are the Bonus Army?

Less than halfway thru I was hoping the SCUM system was gonna come up and boy was I not disappointed 💖

On the topic of the Python guys becoming cunts (Palin excepted) I commend this article to you, which explains the "fall" of revered Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig. In short, the world gave him privilege and moved on, and he remained thinking he was rebelling, all the time in intimate contact with and under the influence of the very people he started off rebelling against. https://meanjin.com.au/blog/leunig-wellness-and-wokeness/ In particular these paragraphs: "...this is connected to what we have to assume is a sincerely held belief that he’s still a scrappy working-class kid, never fully accepted by the cultural elite. On ABC Radio National’s The Book Show, Leunig spoke of his ‘inner Holden Caulfield’, the boy-hero of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, all alone in a society of ‘phoneys’ who push their way to the top. Likewise, talking to Evans, Leunig said that the media industry he navigates ‘is very sort of racy, and tough, and clever … I’m not like that, I feel like I’m a child in a very tough environment’. But while Leunig believes he’s Puck, the holy fool, he’s actually Oberon, the king of the forest. He’s a rich, white, heterosexual cis man, and a cultural behemoth, whereas his imagined ‘woke’ enemies often belong to historically excluded groups, and are often precariously employed in a shrinking media industry that rarely offers its staff the luxurious platform that Leunig has enjoyed since the 1980s." I think this article can be directly applied to the surviving non-Palin Pythons and explains them very clearly.

Frustration with bureaucracy was a big theme of Python-era comedy. Douglas Adams wrote a whole video game about it around the same time Brazil came out.

My death of the author leftist read was that the duct dystopia was the result of privatization. I really enjoy this film and do not want to hate it now that Gilliam has confirmed himself as a libertarian freak and apparently it is now a film beloved by right wing libertarian freaks.

Really feel like you went into this wanting to hate it

And also, yeah, Gilliam is a shit. Made some truly great movies, but has grown to be an utter shit and a bore

I’d also say that I really don’t think Pryce’s character is meant to be read particularly sympathetically, he cuts quite a pathetic little figure (although the reward sex is very very off in this reading)

I don’t think you’re wrong about any of this, and I came to similar conclusions last time I watched it, but I still bloody love this movie. I fell in love with it at the right age (14) and in the 18 years since I’ve not stopped finding fun new things to notice in it

tbh I’m all for a “TrashFuture movie club” series

How the fuck did the Queen ask Liz Truss to form a government and be dead at the end of the week? Alice is right, she died last Oct. Britain. Who knew?

I describe this movie as Cardboard Blade Runner. Great discussion, lots of issues with the movie I hadn't thought of. Still a very fun movie and the tension between whether it is supposed to be funny or depressing is interesting to me. The camera angles and wacky props and goofy sets and costumes make it seem funny, but the underlying plot is so sad.

Just in time to finish off the queen

RIP the Queen

Rewatched it for the first time since early 20s after hyping this movie to my gf and we were both p disappointed. Practical fx are spot on tho.

I think Jill is in the film, not to be the reward girl, but to be what he wants but will never have. I read Sam as being a deeply pathetic cog who just wants something else in his life. Jill and Tuttle represent his hyper idealized view of 'revolution' and how he just wants his 'freedom' without doing any of the work to get it. Jill clearly doesnt want anything to do with him and just wants him gone. Tuttle is an escapist fantasy that's just meant to sweep him off his feet. His dreams make it clear that he wants to be some sort of savior when he obviously cant. Jill's doing work to get what she wants and its clear that Sam doesn't care about what she wants or her motives. I dont think the film wants you to really like Sam as much as it wants you to maybe pity him. Its still a very libertarian movie with obvious issues.

would be genuinely interested to hear a Children Of Men episode. imo its a film that is severely overrated while still being a good film. excellent liberal-fascist worldbuilding but a very contrived premise and a fairly boring plot revolving around a pregnant woman as a macguffin - a MotherBox, if you will.

one of the cover teachers in my secondary school was in this movie

I don't want to push it too hard, but I think there's a defence of the 'reward girl' angle where that's a part of his fantasy disconnect and she's actually far more pragmatic than his imagination of her. Ages since I've seen it though.

Its been a while since I've watched it, but isn't heavily implied that there's no terrorists, and all the explosions are just malfunctioning machinery?

But I don't want to go to Brazil! 😢

So much mouth sounds on this one....

God I do want an executive decision maker though.

Because it's come up on the show before, I wish to quibble with Alice over the notion that characters being gay was used as a punch line on Monty Python. It's never done in a "homophobia is funny" way, it's always portrayed matter-of-factly, and frankly (as a queer kid growing up in the 80s) the way gay men were portrayed on Monty Python was better, healthier and more normal than anything on TV until the tail end of the 90s. Keep in mind that the show started airing two years after gay sex had been de-criminalized in the UK; the act of showing two men in bed together would have been shocking on its own, in any context, and that seems to be why it gets used repeatedly: it was meant to shock and provoke, in a way it (blessedly) no longer can. Also: the laugh track was forced on the show by the BBC, so they inentionally fucked with it and had it land randomly, with no relationship to the jokes or punch lines.

Nate, the device you're thinking of is called headgear. My orthodontist made his patients use it as recently as the 1990s, but from what I gathered from conversations with kids my age my orthodontist had a preference for outdated technology (or lack thereof).

Sounds like another in the classic "screw Flanders" genre

steampunk 1984

saw this movie for the first time a year or two ago, my god what fun it is to inflict on other people. deeply bizarre