Film #174: The Fountain

A dialogue:

FUTURE ME: Why are we doing this? I have work to do.

PRESENT ME: Well, I called you two here to talk about Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain.

PAST ME: One of my favorites.

FUTURE ME: Oh, I was so young in 2006. Not even forty. I was really into anything kind of trippy and obscure.

PAST ME: How did I get so cynical in my old age?

FUTURE ME: Hey, I still like it, but I don’t ever need to see it again. I stopped watching movies I’ve already seen years ago.

PAST ME: Wow!

PRESENT ME: That’s kind of where I’m at now. I think I’m starting to agree with Pauline Kael that watching movies even a second time clues you into their tricks and faults. Only the best ones escape this. This probably means I’ve been watching too many movies.

PAST ME: I can’t see many faults in this one. I saw it on the big screen twice and it stunned me with its boldness and beauty. There’s really nothing like it.

PRESENT ME: The Fountain works most effectively on the big screen, I agree. But there’s a reason for there being nothing like it—it’s a sentimental mess, though occasionally moving. And a box office bomb–way too inquisitive and slow for the masses, even if it’s only 90 minutes long. But it’s brave and beautiful nevertheless.

PAST ME: I love it. It just hits me, and fascinates me. And there’s part of me that sees it as Aronofsky’s effusive love letter to his wife, Rachel Weisz, whom he clearly adores. Just look at all those loving close-ups.

PRESENT ME: They’re divorced now. She remarried James Bond—Daniel Craig.

PAST ME: Aww, that sucks. Man, where’s the love? And I can’t believe Daniel Craig is James Bond now. Weird choice.

FUTURE ME: You should see who’s playing Bond now—Benedict Cumberbatch.

PAST ME: Cumberwhat?

PRESENT ME: Guys, guys…back on point. I still find the conquistador segment of the story transfixing, and the future bubble, with the Tree of Life being sent up into a golden nebula, remains a helluva image.

FUTURE ME: We still don’t have any flying bubbles, but we did finally get the Hoverboard down.

PAST ME: So it’s the present day story, with Hugh Jackman trying to save his wife from cancer that you don’t like?

PRESENT ME: Yeah, that part—which takes up most of the film—feels stiff, soapy and badly acted, even with the post-Requiem for a Dream gift of a supporting role for Ellen Burstyn.

FUTURE ME: Requiem for a Dream. Now that still works. And I DEFINITELY don’t need to see that one again. I’m depressed enough.

PRESENT ME: I get ya on that. But, yeah, I do like how the film is a melding of the three time periods, as if they’re conferring with one another. Do you think the Jackman and Weisz characters are all the same person, only reborn in different bodies?

FUTURE ME: It would seem in keeping with the spiritually transcendent feel of the whole thing. Sometimes it feels a bit overwrought, this aspect of it.

PRESENT ME: When you look back on Aronofsky’s career, there does seem to be copious soul searching throughout. I get the impression he’s ingested a lot of drugs in order to find his spiritual center.

PAST ME: A friend I saw it with the second time said the director has obviously done a lot of DMT, evidenced by the very end, which he said is a pretty fair approximation of that drug’s effects. And I know from another friend Aronofsky’s looking to buy land in Costa Rica. That should tell you something.

PRESENT ME: I’m sorta glad I haven’t hung out with those friends in years. They were fascinating back then, but it was frustrating trying to keep up with their insane babblings. But, yeah, with Pi, Requiem for a Dream and Noah (which was his dream project, amazingly enough), Aronofsky does strike me now as a sideways religious proselytizer.

PAST ME: He did a movie about Noah? Noah’s ark Noah?

PRESENT ME: Yes. Don’t watch it. It has big tree monsters or something in it. They’re introduced about two minutes in, and that’s when I cut it off. I think the drugs have finally gotten to him.

PAST ME: Thanks for the warning.

FUTURE ME: It’ll definitely be the Aronofsky movie you’ll be glad not to see. It’s a real shame. He’s doing heavy metal Christian music videos now.

PRESENT ME: Anyway, I wouldn’t want to fix The Fountain. It’s a movie Aronofsky fought hard to make, although I understand it started off a great deal differently, with Brad Pitt attached as star in an action-packed Matrix-y kick-ass-fest. Pitt still acted as a producer on The Fountain.

PAST ME: I definitely prefer Pitt as an actor over Jackman, who I think works here best as the bearded Spanish conquistador, devoted to his queen and to the quest for the Tree of Life. I’ve just never been able to connect with Jackman as a movie actor, although Aronofsky did a good job of making him look radically different in each episode here.

FUTURE ME: Jackman’s much more charming on the stage. He’s a song-and-dance man. He’s won two Tonys (for musicals) in the past twenty years. No singing and dancing here, though. By the way, why was it that the Tree of Life was needed to save Spain?

PRESENT ME: It’s a little murky, but it has something to do with vanquishing the evil Crusaders who, with their fundamentalism, were destroying the fabric of the country and the world. More to the point, it’s because the queen said it was necessary.

FUTURE ME: I guess Aronofsky made that fairly clear, now that I think about it. But it wasn’t very compelling from a plotting standpoint.

PRESENT ME: No, but I accepted it without much complaint. That section of the film is pretty gorgeous and constantly thrilling. When we switch back to it, I still feel myself prickling up excitedly. The acting style here just seems to suit that setting, and on an art direction and costuming level, I think it’s really sumptuous.

FUTURE ME: But the Matthew Libatique photography is a little dark, no?

PAST ME: It’s a dark film in general. But I like Libatique.

PRESENT ME: He’s at his best with Aronofsky–bet you can’t name one movie he’s done without him (Black Swan is a notable Aronofsky collaboration). I do love the way key shots are centered in a way that recalls religious iconography. Some of the work reminds me of Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates, only tinted to a greater degree. However, the play between dark and light struck me sometimes as a visual cliché. I mean, is there any reason to have the surgery rooms lit like Don Corleone’s office?

FUTURE ME: Exactly. That was absurd.

PAST ME: I just though it looked neat. But maybe you’re right. I loved the twin shots of Jackman’s breath blowing against the hairs on Weisz’s neck and then onto the tree’s fuzzy trunk. That was immensely effective. You know, I think I’m compelled by that middle story just because I’m a goofy romantic.

FUTURE ME: How’s that gone for ya?

PAST ME: Not so well, I’m afraid.

PRESENT ME: Yeah, it’s been a hard road.

FUTURE ME: Uh-huh. Look, I can accept the darkness in the Spanish segment, particularly, because it’s contextually correct, and plus it adds to the menace inherit in that third of the story. It works, too, in the future section of the piece, because outer space is the setting. But, man, I can hardly remember now the “present day” part of the movie, except that it felt like an overly-intellectual Love Story to me, and that I became impatient with. 

PRESENT ME: Yes. Okay, two things I think we all can agree on: The visual effects have a wonderfully hand-crafted quality to them. I mean, I’m sure much CGI is used here, but Aronofsky and his team managed to conceal most traces of it. The future sequence is consistently brilliant, with its smoky, painterly travels through the ether and the odd sight of the live action backed in such a surreal manner.

PAST ME: This is true. Great effects, and also I should mention the terrific editing–it’s an economical movie in length, and it hops to and from each segment in inventive fashions. As to the computer involvement in the visuals, there are moments, approaching the nebula, that feel like we’re entering a CGI vagina. I dunno…maybe that’s a point Aronofsky was conveying there.

FUTURE ME: Yeah, and I suppose the tree is a kind of phallic stand-in. It’s a movie also concerned with the connection between sex and death, without being a very sexy piece (though there’s that rather chaste bathtub scene). I don’t think it knows what it’s saying here, beyond the “Road to Awe” theme that’s repeated throughout (by the menacing, opulent gatekeeper guarding the way to the Tree of Life, and then by Izzy, Rachel Weisz’s sickly present day character). I guess we can just leave it at that—both sex and death are the road to awe. The little death and all of that…

PRESENT ME: And is she named Izzy because she is the character that’s IS who she IS? That somehow she’s the character in the movie that most embraces her present? I mean, I know she gloms onto death gallantly and everything, but I think they fell down on that. She didn’t seem particularly special to me, even while throwing snowballs and romping around in the bedroom with her once-long hair. The film is radically humorless. 2001 has more laughs. The writing needed a little beefing up, I’d counsel.

PAST ME: That’s kind of cruel, but I guess you’re correct—Aronofsky didn’t rely on much beyond her sumptuous face and curious nature to illustrate her luminosity. Another point, getting back to the sex thing–not to get too gooey on the subject–but is there something there in the creamy white juice that Jackman’s conquistador wrings out of the tree?

FUTURE ME: Yeah, that’s there, but can we please not talk about it?

PRESENT ME: I do have to say, I find the climax to that story—and please excuse me for using that word—to be the most surprising moment in the film. It’s the moment we were waiting for—the confrontation with the Tree of Life, the film’s most mysterious character–and it leaves us shocked and breathless.

PAST ME: I agree.

FUTURE ME: Yep. Though I noticed they were careful in keeping that gunk away from Jackman’s beard.

PRESENT ME: Eww, you’re right. Moving on…



PAST ME: I bet the other thing you were going to mention is Clint Mansell’s score.

PRESENT ME: Exactly. It’s a wonder, just like his score for Requiem for a Dream, which was a masterpiece.

FUTURE ME: Yes, that’s the element of the film that’s beyond reproach. It completes its most important work.

PAST ME: It feels like a character unto itself.

PRESENT ME: That’s probably the best thing one can say about a score to a movie, though in some instances, it can be the worst.

FUTURE ME: Not here. It’s superb.

PRESENT ME: Okay, well, that was quick. One question, since we are gathered to talk about The Fountain while in the realm of science-fiction: Is this a science-fiction film?

PAST ME: That’s interesting. It strikes me more of a fantasy piece, but science does certainly play a role in it.

FUTURE ME: Believe me, there is no real science in it. It’s all a matter of the heart. As you get older, you find yourself faced with death often—the deaths of those you love personally, and the deaths of those you’ve never even met but to whom you were close to anyway. And you find yourself wanting to find a way to stave all that death off. But you can’t. We’re mortal. It’s something we have to live with. The idea of a cure to it, or some magic potion, increasingly escapes you, just as it escapes all the characters in this film. But I suspect—and I say this because I’ve never been in real love, except with my cats, which is not the same thing—the injection of deep emotion into the equation complicates things grandly. In the end, it’s a science-fiction film only by default of our own limited pigeon-holing of creative works into stifling categories, mostly for salable purpose. I mean, it’s got space travel and microscopes and telescopes in it and everything, so it’s science fiction, I guess.

PRESENT ME: So what does The Fountain have to say about death and life and sex?

FUTURE ME: I don’t see it as a movie about sex except peripherally. But on life and death, I think it states its case very clearly: There’s nothing we can do about anything but press on. Love doesn’t enter into it, except that it makes life’s inevitable conclusions that much more painful and yet transcendent.

PAST ME: It’s tough going, but I can accept that. What choice do I have?

FUTURE ME: No choice at all.

PRESENT ME: Okay. Well, it’s a thrilling movie to look at and consider, at least.

PAST ME: It makes us think, definitely.

PRESENT ME: That's good enough for me. 

FUTURE ME: Gotta get back to work. Are we done?

Film #173: Fahrenheit 451

NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, I have yet to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Even though I own an autographed first edition of it (and many other sci-fi/horror books), I mostly read non-fiction, preferring to get my fiction from movies. The irony is thick here, I realize.

A few times over the past decades, I remember telling a few film lovers how much I admired Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, only to have the opposition defame my assessment. I've long been always confused by this, because my first viewing of the film was so memorable, probably due to the fact I’d seen very little Truffaut up to that point. The New Wave signatures—the pump-ins, the occasional slow-motion, the graphically stunning irises—shook my world. But, seeing it now, I think I understand where the naysayers were coming from. Fahrenheit 451, in my advanced age, strikes me as an overly-simplified telling of this complex tale, first written in 1953 as a reaction against McCarthy-era devaluing of intellectual ideals.

As presented in the film, the story is one of personal awakening by its main character, Montag. In this strange vision of a future that is decidedly non-futuristic (I guess the film’s clearly low-budget got in the way of depicting an outlook more technologically far along than this, though I kind of like the mixture of the old and new worlds), Werner plays a fireman—that is, a man that starts fires rather than extinguishes them (“We burn books to ashes, and then we burn the ashes”)—who becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his home and work life. Each day, he is sent out on  destructive missions that have begun to eat into his soul, with his commander (a jangly Cyril Cusack, in a role originally intended for Lawrence Olivier) and chief rival Fabian (haughty Anton Diffring) continually looking over his shoulder as if they know something is wrong with him. Montag returns home to Linda, his beautiful but vapid wife (Julie Christie) who can only tear herself away from her flat-screen TV--a bit of prognostication the film gets correct--long enough to down sedatives from her blue bottle (amphetamines are in the red one).

Montag is shaken awake by Clarisse, the gamine young teacher he meets one afternoon on his home-bound monorail. She, too, is played by Christie; the wife is long-haired, and the teacher’s do is more close-cropped, and that is almost the entire difference between the two performances (in the book, Clarisse is much younger). It’s a challenging choice, having the actress play both roles, and I understand Truffaut’s wish not to set up a typical heroine/villainess dichotomy with two separate actresses. Yet I wish Christie had, as Clarisse, enlivened her delivery a bit more; meanwhile, she perfectly assays the deadened Linda, maybe because she’s not much of an actress at this stage in her career (despite her having won the Oscar the year before for John Schlesinger’s Darling).

Still, it’s clear Clarisse is a self-described “well of words” whose embrace of ideas and narrative is obvious, even as she never discusses her secret passion for books. After all, she’s talking to a fireman, and people are generally afraid of firemen, who can approach with impunity and search your body for any books they might suspect hidden (one of the film’s best scenes has firemen patrolling a kid’s playground, with one casually upending a woman’s picnic basket, while another pats down a pregnant woman’s belly and later the captain finds a tiny tome hidden in a baby’s jumper). But Clarisse senses something is different about Montag, and she keeps him on her radar.

The film dramatizes this working man’s transformation rather clumsily. We’re aware he knows how to hide things—a talent he’s had to learn as part of his job uncovering concealed volumes–and once we see he has a secret compartment in his modern household, we’re sure there’s going to be a book hidden there sooner or later. The first one he reads is Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, and we see Montag going though the title page (word for word), starting with the chapter title “I Am Born.” Montag is born here, too, and this indomitable paragraph feels like it tells his story, just like it tells our own. This is a terrific sequence, centered in on the words on the page, instantly reminding us what’s essential about fiction, in that we can see ourselves in stories that put eloquent words to their character’s (and our own) struggles.

But the film falls down in showing Montag’s ultimate shift. Before we sense the difference in his personality from discovering the enrichment in reading (which never comes, because there is no step-up in Werner’s sleepy performance), suddenly there are massive tomes sneaking around his home. When this third-act discovery lands, we’re dumbfounded. “Wow, he’s been doing a lot of reading. When did this happen?” This is the point where I began to ponder the possibility of Fahrenheit 451 needing a remake (which, apparently, is happening courtesy of HBO, who announced in April 2016 a remake slated to be helmed by Man Push Cart and 99 Homes director Ramin Bahrani).

This isn’t the first time such a project has been announced–I recall Mel Gibson being attached to a remake in the early ’90s. Even so, I can only hope this newly-proposed iteration is going to be an eight-episode miniseries or at least a four-hour two-parter, as Bradbury’s original story includes a bloody war going on in this dystopian world’s background (which would possibly clarify the explicit assault on words—here, it’s too-simply portrayed as a battle against people being threatened by ideas that might make them unhappy, while no thought is given to expressions that DO make them happy). I also had to ask myself, well, given that no one really likes to talk to each other in this world filled with empty-headedness and paranoia, how is essential information transmitted? This being a pre-digital telling of the story, the film shows Cyril Cusack going to a bank of file cabinets for information and pulling out Montag’s file, which includes only mugshots of Oskar Werner (including only 6, not the required 12, shots of the back of his head), and in seeing this I wondered “Well, how does this help in any given situation?” I could see a remake fixing all of this with well-placed digital goo-gaws. I also see reparations on those still-striking views Truffaut gives us of people rifling through newspapers filled with only wordlessly cryptic comic-book panels.

There are also problems with the film’s climax, with Montag escaping his former life and taking up with the Book People, a forest-bound commune of intellectuals who each choose preferable texts to memorize in whole in order to preserve them for future generations. Memorization seems like a weak defense for such importance (the digital world could fix this), and as beautiful–and gorgeously fun–as this sequence is, it doesn’t make for a very desirable outcome. The sight of people walking around in the snowy winter, endlessly reciting the volumes they’ve devoted themselves to doesn’t strike us as one that’s demonstrably preferable to  the robotic realm left behind. There’s still no real human communication going on.

Now, I realize my words are making it seem like I don’t like Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. But I do. I can see now his difficulty in making this his first (and only) English-language film. I can sense it in his direction to the actors; apparently, he had a communication clash with Werner great enough for the director to classify this as his most unhappy filming experience (he originally wanted to go with either Charles Aznavour or Jean-Paul Belmondo in the lead, but producers balked at that, so Terrence Stamp was enlisted, until he realized he’d be overshadowed by Christie in the two female leads). And, unusually, I realize it in the titles Truffaut shows, in the film’s most difficult-to-watch sequences, as victims in the book-burning sequences (among the title being destroyed here: Proust, Genet, Behan, Nabokov, but also books by Charles Chaplin, and ones including images by Salvador Dali and even Truffaut's old haunt Cahiers du Cinema).

But when it comes to FILM language, Truffaut excels often. The movie’s most energetically edited sequences are its best: the firemen’s preparations for duty (a scene that probably influenced countless filmmakers, including James Cameron) and the bookburning sequences, chief among them the film’s centerpiece, an errand targeting Clarisse’s old-fashioned home (the more traditional they are, the more likely they are to house books), with the superb Bee Duffell, cast with her unmistakable chipmunk cheeks, as Clarisse’s housemate, a woman who would prefer to die along with her friendly books. Duffell was an Irish actress with an atypical visage who appeared in Quatermass and the Pit and, in her final performance, as an old crone in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Her one-scene performance here, though, cements her in film history. She bravely lights the match that sets herself and her print collection on fire, and as such, she still burns in the minds of those who love books and would gladly perish with them.

It’s the film’s sensational photography, by Nicolas Roeg, that keeps you going through it. Just looking at Fahrenheit 451 is a treat. Your eyes drink in those dazzling reds around the firehouse (where even the firepole senses Montag’s betrayal), or the maudlin oranges in Montag’s chilly home. The blue siren lights sing around the book-burning spots, as do the drab cement grays around the blocky British suburbs. The enveloping warmth of the Book Woman’s library is an oasis, albeit one short lived, while the autumnal and ultimately snowy vistas of the book-lover’s fiefdom leaves you with the impression that a fantastic movie has been seen (until you’re left to put it all together). There’s only one disappointing special effects shot to be seen here, a goofy view of four dangling air-patrolling policemen that’s clearly a blue-screened afterthought. Still, Tony Walton’s costume design (Nazi-influenced, when it comes to the firemen’s sternly blackened uniforms) and Syd Cain’s art direction also do their part (although one senses that the set design could use a little more cash thrown at it).

I also love Truffaut’s many dark gags: the needless breaking of things in the Book Woman’s house; Cusack’s throwaway “Stop it” to a man pantomiming a romantic embrace during the playground assault; the apple-chomping book lover seen throughout the entire film (munching on the fruit of knowledge); Anton Diffring’s cross-dressing second role as a briefly-seen woman observing Clarisse’s return to the elementary school she’s been fired from for being too smart; the Captain holding up a copy of Mein Kampf as he extols the burning of all books; the dumpy doctors outrageously dressed in white patent leather while giggling over tending to the comely Linda as she lies overdosed on downers; the inclusion of a Mad Magazine paperback during the book burning sequence; Linda’s gasp as she removes a picture from a wall and finds a book dropping from behind it (she acts like it’s a cockroach); the Book Woman’s smiling regurgitation of by-rote times tables as her executioners count down to her death; the twin book lovers at the end who represent the two volumes of Pride and Prejudice; and, most notably, the hilarious TV show (“Come Play With Us”) that Linda gleefully participates in, not realizing that her responses have been pre-determined by the producers (“What do you think, Linda?”). I adore these sly touches.

And there are more serious moments that land mightily, like the one where Montag identifies an elderly man as a book-holder (the film’s frame alarmingly solidifies the suspect, with blackness keeping him in check). There’s that great scene (perhaps Werner’s best) where he reads to Linda’s collected girlfriends, reducing us to sorrow because she had never been reminded of emotions she’d held inside. There’s the agitating moment where Clarisse tearfully revisits her stark elementary school, with a former student recoiling in horror upon seeing her (the kid is played by a pre-Oliver Mark Lester). In a quick glimpse, we see Montag’s escape story being told on TV, with only the shot of the back of his head (the one that his captain wanted more examples of earlier) being used as public identification. And, finally, there’s glory in the final sequence where human intelligence somehow finds peace in this absurdly callous world.

On speaking to how Ray Bradbury’s story has come to fruition, one has to look at the devaluation of books, and even movies, as commodities. As a collector, I can’t help but see my library (with many first editions, including a signed first edition of Fahrenheit 451) spiraling down in intellectual value now that millennials (at least) fail to recognize the worth of real-world books. But I do see this film, and the book it’s based on, as an effective clarion call to their import. No Kindle version, subject to open-ended editing, can be trusted against the power of the printed word, and no world without reading can be one that adequately celebrates the accomplishments of man. Still, I do hope for an eventually superior cinematic recounting of Mr. Bradbury’s universally prescient mainstay.

Film #172: Quatermass and the Pit

I'm surprised by the seemingly large number of rabid science-fiction fans who have never seen the Hammer Studios' classic Quatermass and the Pit. Why have they missed this essential entry in the Bristish studio's treasured output? Well, neither Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing are in it, first of all. It wasn't a major hit when it arrived in 1967. It’s been out of print on DVD for many years, and was only released on Blu-Ray in 2011, and has quickly gone out of print again. Also there could be some confusion lingering as it was (not badly) renamed Five Million Years to Earth upon its 1968 American release, since the estimable UK TV and movie hero Professor Bernard Quatermass was largely an unknown quantity on US shores. Anyway, it's a film that's never been talked about in the same breath as other heady sci-fi classics like Solaris and Blade Runner, though it certainly deserves to be. If I’m correct and many of you have missed this bonafide masterpiece--or somehow have forgotten its rather nightmarish power--I’m happy to lead you to a visitation (or re-visitation) of its estimable horrors.

The Quatermass series has a complex history. It originated on British TV in 1953, with actor-turned-writer Nigel Kneale’s serial The Quatermass Experiment dramatizing the aftermath of a failed mission to space; a single astronaut (out of a three-man crew) returns to Earth, upon which Quatermass is charged to figure out why the spaceman’s flesh is slowly deteriorating. Reginald Tate would be the first of many actors to assay the role, and the piece would be remade for cinemas in 1955 with Brian Donlevy in the lead (the film would be rather strangely retitled The Creeping Unknown in the US).

The TV serial was a huge hit for BBC, so they quickly were on board for a 1955 sequel, Quatermass II, which had John Robinson taking over the role after Reginald Tate’s untimely death at 58. In this installment, Quatermass studies the effects of a meteor shower and uncovers an alien invasion that has reached the top echelons of the British government, and so it’s up to the professor to weigh the pros and cons of using a nuclear device to upset the alien plot. Once again, this massive hit was remade for cinemas in 1957 with the highly difficult Brian Donlevy in the lead (he was battling serious alcoholism). The US distributors, obviously continuing to have a difficult time with the character’s name, decided to give this one the drab moniker Enemy From Space.

By 1958, BBC was again badgering Kneale for another series, so he came up with Quatermass and the Pit. In this cycle, the professor (here played by Andre Morell) and his team soon ferret out a mind-boggling theory that puts forth not only answers to our derivation from alien species, but also to the very human notion of abject evil and its representatives here on Earth. This turned out to be the most thoughtful and unsettling entry into the series, and it’s for this reason that the cinematic adaptation didn’t arrive for almost another decade (not surprisingly, the American financiers were flummoxed by the story). Anyway, it was probably a bear for Kneale to reduce his tale down to a more movie-shaped 90 minutes (by the way, the 3 ½ hour, six-episode original is now available on You Tube).

It’s good they waited, though. As fine as Hammer house director Val Guest’s work was on the first two black-and-white cinematic installments, by 1966, when Hammer was charged with remaking Quatermass and the Pit, the addition of color was absolutely necessary, and director Roy Ward Baker’s use of Hammer’s team in this regard was exemplary. Hammer films are always better in color, and as always, red is there favorite hue. It pops up most creatively all throughout this film, and is invariably a sign of scary things to come. But blues, greens and grays are equally important here.

The unusual burning-red credits that open Quatermass and the Pit are a portent of hellish things to come. Under Tristam Cary’s stinging but sparse score, blazing puzzle pieces fit together to construct a horrific skull as the unusually shortened credits sequence unfolds into a thin horizontal image of a London bobby patrolling the street’s outside of the Hobbs End underground station, where tunneling workers are dutifully peeling away layers of gooey clay. Director Baker keeps things moving quickly in this picture, so in only seconds, the major discovery of a glimmering, simian-looking skull appears in their sights. “Look at those dead eyes, and those gnashers,” a worker says. And before we can breathe again, another skeleton unglued from the mud, and the government is called in to investigate as Mod London looky-loos are gathering outside the station.

Leading the excavation is Dr. Matthew Roney (James Douglas), a grey-suited, serious-faced sort of chap, thin and pinched though joyful at his new find. His second is Barbara Judd (Barbara Steele), who supervises the various spots where fossils have been located. Roney manages the tour of the site for the press, who are present as new pieces are uncovered (one of the excavators is played by Bee Duffell, who portrayed the book-loving woman forced to see her library go up in flames in Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451). Under the interrogation of a red-coated journalist, Roney admits his belief that the fossils are evidence of an ancient ape-man that predates science’s view of man’s arrival on Earth. Just as this is unfolding, Duffell discovers a wall of metallic material she cannot define. The possibility is raised that this is an unexploded bomb dropped during the German blitz, and as far fetched as this is, it’s a good enough cover story to keep the public far away from their findings.

But it necessitates the arrival of the military, who have no time for science. Roney sees his site taken over and demands answers from the higher ups. This introduces Julian Glover as hawkish Colonel Breen, who’s introduced battling rocket scientist Professor Quatermass (Andrew Keir, who is superb here in his bearded authority) over the future of moon colonization, which is wholly being taken over by the military against his peaceful objections (“Nose to the grindstone,” says the prim government bureaucrat as he leaves them to it). Breen gets a call to Hobbs End, and he invites Quatermass to join him in a shakily placid collaboration.

When they see the “unexploded bomb,” it’s instantly clear this is not a construction of 1940s Germany. It has been excavated further, and looks like something constructed by a young H.R. Giger, with sharp lines and weird curves that connote something from another world (I guarantee, this film was a big influence on Ridley Scott’s Alien). Of course, the colonel stays his course, but Quatermass immediately thinks bigger. This craft they discover doesn’t conform to anything known by man. It’s a metal that doesn’t conduct magnetism and is resistant to any damage. But the military man, realizing his job is over if it’s NOT a bomb, stick to his story. But when another skull is discovered under the craft’s hull, Quatermass asks how did it get there, and remain there intact. The colonel is clearly disturbed by this, and by the news from his captain (Bryan Marshall) that there are no records of unexploded arsenal landing in the area. Quatermass is clearly both an establishment and anti-establishment figure here. I love how the movie sets him up as an authority and as a protester against military aggression. Thank goodness Kneale and Ward did this without introducing any hippie characters that could have badly dated the film.

It’s told that the area around the station had been abandoned during the war, not by evacuation, but by choice; the population had abandoned the area out of some “superstition” that the area housed a terrible power. “A lot of nonsense, I dare say,” a policeman tells an intrigued Quatermass. In examining the abandoned flats across the street, the professor learns of noises heard, things seen, that frightened the inhabitants away. The eerily scratched walls seem to bear this out, and so does the sweaty bobby who crumbles under the pressure of inhabiting the area. Miss Judd then informs Quatermass, upon his notice of the area’s original name Hob’s Lane, that Hob was once a popular nickname for Satan.

I think that’s quite enough to get one interested in the film. I don’t want to reveal any more than is uncovered in its first third. But, of course, I do want to trumpet the movie’s later success. It’s really a celebration of science (as is the entire Quatermass series). It’s a film about keen observation and its resulting conclusions. Quatermass and the Pit is, all at once, a piece concerned with fear, curiosity, and revelation. Quatermass, Roney and Judd form a triad devoted to discovering truth, even in the face of remarkably preposterous evidence. Watching it is to look into the face of those who believe one thing, only to discover another, more outlandish reality. It’s the essence of science (“The Germans didn’t make this and lose the secret,” Quatermass says of the harder-than-diamond craft. “You ask Von Braun”).

Quatermass and the Pit doesn’t shirk away from terror. As the process goes on, the threats mount, and the implications mount even higher. But it becomes a film that doesn’t accept superstition as rote, but as a jumping-off point for recognizing the reasons behind false beliefs. In that way, it’s very much unlike most science-fiction films. It has its roots firmly planted in the terra firma, and yet it becomes so otherworldly. The sequence following the exploration of the craft is unnerving; its results are even more so.

Proper respect must be given here to the movie’s art direction (by Bernard Robinson), makeup (by Michael Morris), and sound design. At times since its release, the film’s low budget has been held against it. But these artisans really make their creations sing. It’s true that, later on in the film, the visual effects let us down a bit. But I contend they add, in their ineptness, a kind of odd movement that better effects would fail to achieve. They somehow hit the abstract mark of pure, primordial dread. I've always thought it interesting that this film and 2001: A Space Odyssey arrived on screens at nearly the same time. Both films are about dug-up discoveries that send humans hurtling towards disclosures about our past for which our species is not quite prepared. Both are about the co-mingling of alien and human experience, and even of their shared DNA. I have no doubt that Kubrick viewed the original BBC production, since he watched even the most obscure science-fiction films in preparation for 2001. But, by the time its screeching, glaringly strange and harrowing denouement, Quatermass and the Pit provides an insight that Kubrick’s film arguably misses: in this co-mingling, a myth was formed, and that myth created religion—the uneasy cohabitant of science. This idea creeps me out, and is the chief quality that makes this smart, fast-moving, highly entertaining film unforgettable.

Film #133: Inception

It is difficult to transmit how much stress Inception caused me--and no doubt others--before seeing it. But I'll try.


Back when The Dark Knight was vying for a Best Picture Oscar, Kristopher Tapley, of In Contention, and I had a terrible, too-nasty (I love his site) quarrel about the merits of that film, directed by Christopher Nolan. You can see my opinions of that film here. Kris and I, on his website, went round and round on the merits of the Batman sequel, and even now, I remain unconvinced of its quality (even though I have always admitted that (a) I love Heath Ledger's performance and (b) I really enjoy Batman Begins).

Our argument turned way-too-mean, and I eventually apologized to him (though he did not to me, as is his right and wont), but I was truthful in steadfastly believing that The Dark Knight would not receive a Best Picture nomination. No sequel had ever gotten such a nod without its original getting a like nomination, no matter how much the public complained, so the possibility was out of the question. And when The Reader "stole" the nomination from The Dark Knight (I maintained that it "stole" it from The Fall), I turned out to be correct.

But Kris and his fellow fans ultimately were correct. In the following year, reacting to the Dark Knight snub, the Academy decided to expand the list of Best Picture nominees--for the first time since the 1940s--to ten nominees. This, instantly, made The Dark Knight into one of the most influential movies of all time. After all, no one was crying over the fact that the superior but less-seen Wendy and Lucy or The Fall got cheated out of a nomination, not to mention any of the countless movies left out of the race beforehand. This decision was clearly arrived at because the insanely popular Dark Knight, even with eight nominations, got left out in the cold. The Academy, always looking for ratings to boost its boodle, had to respond.

And so The Dark Knight, as undeserving a film as it was (beyond a delivery device for Ledger's performance, which went on to win the movie's only Oscar), had made its mark. And this decision to expand the field, in lieu of this unjust movie, made me angry. So angry that I kept my hairy eye out for Nolan's next film, a film that was called Inception. And then, all each of us had to do was wait.


Nolan was careful. When his film was about to hit, he let only the people who loved his previous film take a look at it. What I mean by this is that he let only ONLINE critics--for now and always, a sci-fi, horror and genre-loving crowd--take a gander at it first. And, predictably, they all loved it. I was immediately suspicious, because, as a former sci-fi fan, I knew how this crowd could be. In my mind, they were going to love this thing no matter what.

So I waited. Waited for the first level-headed reviews. And David Edelstien, bless him, as wrong as he was, came first. I knew, deep down inside, that this was a movie to reckon with when his piece landed. And I felt sorry for Edelstien when he couldn't get with it. In fact, I took his review as a notation that I, myself, wouldn't able to get with it, either. I did, however, see Rex Reed's obviously mean-spirited and frankly stupid review of the film to be obvious bunk (that guy really need to retire--in fact, ouside of the NY Times' square Bosley Crowther and the New Yorker's hip Pauline Kael--a writer disliked by Kris Tapley, by the way--do movie reviewers EVER retire?).

Before I saw Inception, I read virtually no good reviews of it, and almost all middling or bad reviews of it. Frankly, in my mind, I was still battling Kris over The Dark Knight.

And when I sat my ass down in the very front rows of the Empire 25 on 42nd Street in NYC, with the 2nd week crowd crunching in on either side of me, after seeing the obviously different The Kids Are All Right and Winter's Bone, I was sure I was going to hate this movie.

And now, I can tell you. It only took five minutes, and this image:


and I was hooked. I never even questioned things later. There was something about all that water flowing in on this one man, overwhelming him--water, the stuff of life, is very important in this movie--and that's all it took. I gave myself over completely to Nolan's work, and kept on adoring it top to bottom (with Wally Phister's photography, Lee Smith's incisive editing, and Guy Dyas' gorgeous art direction in assistance).

I knew some things going in. This helped. When I saw Ken Watanabe in extreme old age makeup at the outset, I understood some things. Indeed, when I saw Leonardo DiCaprio's face first planted in the sand, I understood some things, too. With this, I knew that this is a movie that is spoiler-proof. In fact, spoilers might HELP the viewer, though I wouldn't necessarily wish them upon anyone.

Inception is a masterwork, a film of ideas, of emotion, of action and excitement, of character and believability. It is a film that left me with a feeling unlike any movie I have ever seen before,

I am a musician--a drummer--and after drumming, after practice, there is a certain sense with which your brain is buzzing. It's difficult to put into words, but it's a rapier sense that your brain has been putting mathematical equations into practical, definable, tonal use. Inception, with its insanely air-tight timing, is a film that exercises that very part of your brain. You need not be a musician to feel this; in other words, if you've ever wanted to experience what it feels like to play music, Inception is the movie for you (for sure, this is Hans Zimmer's most clever score). Now, what other movie in the history of movies has led you to feel this? It's a unique work.

I'm not going recount the plotting of Inception here. See it for yourself to get this. However, I am going to talk about other REVIEWERS' perceptions of the plot here. Here we are, almost a month after the film's debut, and even though Nolan's film has earned only a fraction of what it deserves at the box office (at this writing, about $215 million). Still, there's no need to talk about what the movie's about. If you're reading this, you already know.

Lemme take a look at David Edelstein's review primarily, because it's his that I defended BEFORE I HAD SEEN THE MOVIE. His first jab comes when he recounts some of the plot: "Why is an “inception” more difficult than an extraction? “The subject’s mind always knows the genesis of an idea. {True inspiration is impossible to fake.}” explains one character—which strikes my unoriginal and highly suggestible mind as dead wrong." However, the dialogue continues:

Cobb: That's not true.
Saito: (to Cobb) Can you do it?
Cobb: Are you offering me a choice? Because I can find my own way to square things with Kobold.
Saito: Then you do have a choice.
Cobb: Then I choose to leave, sir.

If you haven't seen the movie, then you don't know where we are. This proves that the movie is more detail-laden than your average (or, at least, this average) film review can cover. And thus it's instantly worth much more inspection than the average one-time film viewing can offer.


I'm not going to try and explain Inception here, either. Maybe I'll try that some time in the future. But, while watching it , getting all the nooks of the story takes away some of the fun you could have while watching it unfold on the big screen (which is where it NEEDS to be seen). I tried to explain what I thought Lynch meant with Mulholland Dr., and at the same time accepted what others thought the movie meant. And I refused to explain what Kubrick meant with 2001, though I know without a doubt what the movie means to me. That I lump Inception in with these two landmark films lets you know what I think of it (though, truthfully, it doesn't achieve absolute greatness to a degree matching those two cinema landmarks; let's don't go overboard, here).

Back to the bad reviews. I had absolutely no problem with the characterizations, as Edelstein did. DiCaprio gives his best, truly adult performance as Cobb (he may be dumb, or at least not very self-reflexive, but I forget the first name, unlike Mr. Edelstein; however, the first name may be important). DiCaprio has never seemed so insistant before. I have loved him in many films--and Edelstein praised him outright. However, even if you don's believe in this actor, he is indeed this work's persona.


Ellen Page delivers the film's most difficult role as the receptor of all rules with great aplomb; her wide eyes and determined delivery do it all, and always when the film most needs it. In fact, she is the film's true brain.


Tom Hardy as the Counterfeiter is funtime superb. He provides the humor that Inception has been accused of not having. How could one miss it? This is the definable sign that he is, after his indescribable show in Bronson (is this the goddamn same guy?), the Next Big Thing. He is the film's swank.


And Joseph Gordon-Levitt is absolutely perfect as the second in the story. His performance is the film's most physical, and yet he is ever-present as both a caring and an active participant in the story. If it's not a breakthrough role, then it's right near close to it. He is the film's muscle.


And here we get to Rex Reed, who said...well, fuck, I don't wanna quote his shitass review. But he didn't even know what Gordon-Levitt was doing in the elevators. He was looking for the drop, dimwit! Here, I become the one of the fanboys whom I previously slammed. Wake up, man. It's there right in front of you! You dismissed so much of what the movie had to offer! Yeah, it's a rich movie--so rich, it can withstand two, three viewings. But just because that's the case, don't give it the heave-ho, Rex. Actually, I was glad I read something about Inception before I saw it; it gave me so much more insight. I would not have felt right about reviewing it before I'd seen it twice (which I have now). This just lets you know that most movies you read something about beforehand, they're so shallow that they're blown apart because of it. Inception is not one of these movies. No amount of pre-knowledge can ruin it for you, And than includes knowledge of its final moments. (NO SPOILER ALERT: The spinning top in important.)


Then we get into another problem many reviewers had: that of the content of the dreams themselves. They noted how the dream portrayed didn't have many of the qualities that their dreams, or film dreams had. There were no strangenesses, no sexual notes, no absurdities. But why was this a problem? This was explained, too, and very lightly. These guys chasing our heroes with machine guns, they were PLANTS that were put there to upset the "normal" yarn of the dream. This seems simple to me; I don't think I would've needed previewing to understand this.


Now I think we should get into the time travel element of Inception. If you can't get this, even on a subliminal level, while watching it, I'm sorry. But I'll try and help. The meat of the film takes place in four different time positions. This is where the "music" of the movie comes into play. SPOILERS EVERYBODY!: There is the first level, where the sleeping heroes are in the falling van; there is the second level, in the hotel with the elevators; there is the third level, with the snowy climbs, and there is the fourth level, with Cobb's subconscious (and here I can praise Marion Cotillard's singular performance as Cobb's confused and dead wife; I'll never forget that pool of tears upon her eyes). She is the film's soul.


And with that, I'll finally address the most insulting exclusion of those reviewers who disliked Inception: the accusation that this is a cold, unfeeling movie. By no mean is this the case. This is a movie that is ABOUT emotion. It is about one man's inability to let go. And it is about another man's inability to let go. (Cillian Murphy, the nominal "villain," who becomes one of the heroes, may own the most moving moment of the film.) And it begins with yet ANOTHER man's inability to let go (the always reliable Watanabe). In fact, in the end, it is about the audience's inability to let go of whatever they are holding on to. It is, also, about the filmmaker's inability to let go of his past success (which I think he thinks he doesn't deserve). Inception is remarkable because it is about so many things. It really comes from the heart.


What a movie. What an experience!!! What a great gift! I hate to do this, because it can seem corny. But thank you, Mr. Nolan, for proving so many, and me, wrong, and so many fans correct. Inception is proof that genius cannot be ordered up, a la The Dark Knight. It is a quality that must be massaged.

NOTE: Inception is so multi-leveled, so superb, it deserves a more detailed review, which is forthcoming, after a few months have passed. A link will be provided here.

Film #109: Brazil

It was very much in character for Hollywood—and particularly, the meddlesome 70s/80s-era brass at Universal—to hold a movie like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil back from the masses. Completed in 1985, Brazil was first unspooled to the studio bosses in an infamous screening that resulted in abject anger from those who bankrolled the project; one wonders what they thought they were going to get, since we have to assume they read the film’s incendiary, ultimately Oscar-nominated script by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard (from an uncredited idea by Jabberwocky screenwriter and former Help! writer Chuck Alverson). Or, hell, maybe they DIDN’T read it; they just didn’t have the time. At any rate, Universal’s confidence evaded Brazil from day one. Their complaints: the film was too long, and incredibly depressing, while also falling very much on the weird side. So they demanded the film be recut and the ending be changed before they’d put a penny up for distribution and marketing. Gilliam did take the movie into the editing room, excising twenty minutes from its running time. But he flat out refused to change its heartbreaking ending, which he rightfully felt was integral to the story.

So the film sat on the shelf, a victim of spite. And it sat and sat until Gilliam decided to take unprecedented action. First came a lawsuit against Universal. Then Gilliam started bankrolling embarrassment-aimed ads in the trade papers asking short-sighted then-studio-head Sid Sheinberg (the villain of this story) when he was going to release Brazil. This infuriated Sheinberg, who dug his heels in for a long-haul ruckus. “It happens with every film,” Gilliam later said. “There comes a moment where the money and the creative elements all come crashing together. Everybody's under a lot of pressure, and everybody is panicking about what works and what doesn't. And the studios and the money always have one perspective and the creative people have another one, and usually what happens is a lot of compromises get made.”

However, at the end of that metaphorical rope, and refusing to compromise, Gilliam—like Brazil’s bureaucracy-battling protagonist—heroically made a final end run around the studio, stabbing it right in its barely-beating heart. He stole a print of his movie and showed it to the members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. And they, naturally, went nuts over it. Seeing this as their own chance to become giant-killing jacks, the organization handed this unreleased movie its year-end Best Picture award, along with Best Director and Best Screenplay. Gilliam was now in unprecedented territory. Sid Sheinberg had been vanquished; Universal then had no real choice but the release the film as is (but this didn’t stop them, maddeningly, from selling a gutted version of the movie to television; you can see this ludicrous, criminally-slashed version on Criterion’s monumental three-disc release of the film, which also includes critic Jack Mathews laudibly detailed documentary adaptation of his 1987 book The Battle of Brazil).
  Finally, and happily, justice was served. I balk at imagining what would've befallen Brazil had Gilliam not stuck to his guns. The movie is brilliantly twisted satire, brain-stimulating enough to be comparable to only a few cinematic works (2001, Donnie Darko, and Eraserhead, among them). Upon his third film as a solo director, Gilliam’s main claim to fame at Brazil’s release was as the one American among the band of Brits in the Monty Python comedy troupe. Though he performed with them sparingly, his biggest contribution had been as their master of animation for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, their legendary TV show that ran from 1969 to 1974 (to today, his Python work demands to be seen as one of film's most distinctive animation purveyances; absolutely no one can imitate it without being called out). Before then, the Minnesota-born Gilliam had been a writer/illustrator associated with the notoriously wrathful Harvey Kurtzman—the 50s-era Mad magazine mastermind—with whom he worked on Help!, Trump, and Humbug, three of Kurtzman’s short-lived 60s humor magazines (which also ran pieces by Gilbert Shelton, Robert Crumb, Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson, Frank Frazetta, Jack Davis, and many more underground/Mad comic figures). It was at Help! that Gilliam met John Cleese, and there his association with the Pythons was born.

It’s Gilliam, as the creator of the Pythons' bizarre cut-out-based animation as well as a notably enriched style of live-action, who gave the troupe their unmistakable visual character. As the co-director of 1975's Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1979's Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and 1983's Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, he was mainly charged for each film’s unique appearance (his directing co-hort, Terry Jones, was primarily involved in directing the actor’s performances). Before Brazil, Gilliam had struck out on his own only twice, with Jabberwocky and Time Bandits. Both were wonderfully sick variations on basic myths and children’s stories, strewn with cruel jokes and strange, sometimes frightening but nevertheless forward-thinking scenes barely suited for children. Time Bandits has, since its 1981 release, become a cult movie, but in being uncategorizable as a kid’s or an adult’s film, it was at the time a box-office disappointment in spite of its stellar cast (Sean Connery, David Warner, Ralph Richardson, Michael Palin, Kenny Baker, John Cleese, and Shelley Duvall). The faintly light mood with which Time Bandits begins is always being battered by an unrelenting yet very funny grimness. However, both it and 1977’s Jabberwocky are fitting predecessors to Brazil; the gloom that hovered over those two films is securely anchored down in Gilliam’s 1985 movie, but it’s intensified by iron-clad batches of irony, symbolism, allusion, grotesquery, satire, and battalions of remarkable shot set-ups that, by themselves, make Brazil unforgettable.

Nothing is what it seems in Brazil, and that extends to the title itself. The country--itself far from Heaven--never makes an appearance, unless one wants to postulate that the puffy clouds that open the film hang somewhere above the South American coastline. The song that’s warbled over this shot ("Aquarela do Brasil" by Ary Barroso, sung here by Geoff and Maria Muldaur, the latter being synonymous with the 1974 smash hit "Midnight at the Oasis"). The 1939 composition first appeared in Disney’s 1943 animated feature Saludos Amigos (its sixth), and it's ubiquitous in Michael Kamen’s beautifully lush score; it’s a tune about a paradise eons away from the heavily-industrialized, never-named English city that serves as Brazil’s imposing “Somewhere in the 20th Century” setting. Things are run here by an oppressive hybrid of government and big business called The Ministry of Information, unstoppable in its ruthless debt-collecting, in its harsh culling of political undesirables, and in its ill-starred dehumanization of the Everyman, represented here by the passive, dreamy, unambitious Ministry rubber-stamper Sam Lowry—our hero, played impeccably by a nervous, restless Jonathan Pryce.

The movie literally explodes into life with a crew of Ministry stormtroopers ransacking the flat occupied by tough girl Jill Layton (Kim Greist). Here, they cut a pointless hole in her floor so the huns can make a more spectacular entrance into her downstairs neighbor’s apartment. It’s here that the Buttle family "lives," crammed into a small space, about to celebrate Christmas (Brazil stands with Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut as one of the most unlikely movies with a Yuletide setting). Wrongly accused of being an anti-ministry terrorist (after a “bug” falls into a Ministry machine sending out an APB out on a “Mr. Tuttle”), Buttle is fitted with a choking straight-jacket and is whisked away from his mortified wife and kids, definitely to a deathly fate.

Later, it’s Sam who discovers that a dreadful mistake has been made. Utilizing the M.O.I.’s amusingly retro-fitted technology (the computers here look like typewriters with their innards hanging out), he finds that it was Tuttle, not Buttle, who’s been targeted for termination. It’s Sam’s wimpish, outwardly intimidating boss Kurtzmann (named, of course, after Gilliam’s one-time mentor, and played with supreme comic timing by the great Ian Holm; there's another character in the film named "Mr. HELPman," played by Peter Vaughn, and I have it on good authority that Brazil is an extended homage to Harvey Kurtzman, right down to the cluttered art direction, which mirrored Kurtzman's office). The cowering Kurtzman charges Sam with the unfortunate task of consoling and reimbursing the Buttle family. In the film’s most shattering moment, Mrs. Buttle (Sheila Reid) is apoplectic with grief, with an outpouring of grief to which the almost-dead-inside Sam hardly knows how to respond. Here, Sam gets a field-trip look at the misery his all-powerful agency continually doles out to the innocent and guilty alike. And it’s here that Sam also gets his first glimpse of the woman who’s been the focus of his winged dreams: Jill Layton. However, the feeling isn't mutual. She sees him as what he is: an agent—albeit an unwitting one—of evil. Thus the breakdown of Sam's barely-held loyalties begins.

Sam is steered even further away from his blissful yet throttling ignorance when, in the middle of the night, his air conditioning conks out. After putting in a no-avail call to Central Services, the duct-working subsidiary of the MOI, he accepts the help of Tuttle—yes, that Tuttle—who doubles as a rogue heating specialist and freedom fighter. It’s notable that both Tuttle (Robert De Niro, in a welcome and rare post-Raging Bull supporting role) and Jill are the only two characters in Brazil who have American accents, whereas the most despicable (including Michael Palin as Sam's torture-happy best friend, Bob Hoskins as a by-the-books Central Services repairman, Jim Broadbent as a butchering plastic surgeon, and co-writer Charles McKeown as a nosy Ministry cohort) have impossibly thick British accents. There’s an obvious correlation to a certain 18th Century anti-Brit revolution to be had here; it's almost enough to make one wonder why, if this his view of the English, Gilliam gave up his American citizenship long ago. Anyway, it’s through both Jill and Tuttle that Sam begins to see the government he for which he toils as the monster it truly is, and thereby experiences the freedom he’s been longing for in dreamy interludes where he visions himself as a great, armored man perpetually in flight and fight against a massive metal samurai (his phantasmagoric vision of the Ministry).

As with all great films, Brazil can viewed many times before all its riches can be processed. It is clearly about the eternal battle between the oppressed and the oppressors. And while it makes us root for the freedom-fighters, it also makes us recoil at their bloody tactics (Brazil is a particularly interesting movie viewed today, in this light). Here, terrorism is seen as a long-awaited liberation from a government whose power has been woefully misused; however, it’s also portrayed as a method of rebellion that can spell out only doom--or at least an unhonorable victory--for its perpetrators and their targets. There are no winners here, and this makes Gilliam's POV brilliantly elusive. In addition, surely, Brazil is a put-down of out-of-control, circuitous technology and disgustingly egotistical higher-classed values (symbolized by Sam’s mother, the disgustingly vain and well-connected Ida Lowry, played with obvious relish by Katherine Helmond). Brazil is a condemnation of a people who’ve buried their roots, who’ve failed to see the merits of life’s basics, and are consistently being drowned in the denials provided by television, wealth, face lifts, commercialism, sexual fantasy, computers, and artificiality.

Though Gilliam and company make much comic hay of this setting, they portray a world in which one can’t breathe; as the years go by since Brazil’s release, it looks more and more precient, much like Dr. Strangelove and Network before it. It hit the Reagan-flavored mid-1980s as a political and moral warning laced with a poisonous comic timing that alludes to a long list of previous influences, including 1984, The Crowd, Potemkin, Casablanca, Duck Soup, Metropolis, Alice in Wonderland, and Mad Max, to name but a few.

However we wish to interpret Brazil (and many have been perplexed and turned off by it—almost as many, I’d bet, as have embraced it), none can deny that, at the VERY least in a technical and directorial sense, it succeeds magnificently. It builds a ridiculously complete world (and did so at the bargain price of a $9 million budget; it’s still one of the most expensive-looking movies I’ve ever seen). Its time period is unpinnable. Everyone is fabulously dressed in 1930s garb, but is surrounded by art director Norman Garwood’s Oscar-nominated and often decrepit futurism. It’s not surprising to see actors donned in vintage fedoras wandering around an apartment perfect for Blade Runner, and then to see another set of tomorrow-decked players splayed about in an environment that could've been constructed for an old Warner Brothers gangster pic. Roger Pratt’s gleaming photography--a strangling stir of realism and expressionism--meanwhile transmits more information than any boring exposition could ever unleash. And ILM's George Gibbs contributes many moments of stunning special effects work.

All of this belies an often sickening illogic that makes Brazil one of the most memorable of movies; it’s ironically sort of easy to feel sorry for those beleaguered Universal bigwigs who, in all fairness, probably didn’t know what had hit them upon seeing the film for the first time (if the film was once 20 minutes longer than it actually was, the execs probably did a good thing by making Gilliam retire once again to the editing room because, as it stands, Brazil is a steamroller at almost 2 ½ hours). With its head-splitting final 30 minutes, in which ending after ending unfolds, with Sam’s fever dreams folding in on his “reality,” Gilliam’s movie is truly unlike any other. There are few scene transitions (the director loves the shock cut); there are few people to truly like (only Jill and Tuttle remain unscathed); the film builds a suffocating uncertainty that keeps us on edge until its last moments. By the time these unfurl, the viewer’s comfort zones have been obliterated by blast after debilitating blast. The cinematic parade that is Brazil’s notorious finale is so unforgiving in its pace and intensity that one emerges feeling rather irreparably dented by it. Brazil is always pulling us in different directions. It's a place where evolution is devolution: moving forward is nothing more than stepping way back in Gilliam’s onscreen destruction--and celebration--of fascism’s warm and awful glow.