MOVIE REVIEWS : A LOOK AHEAD, A LOOK BACK : ‘Brazil’: Dark, Dazzling Vision of the Future

Watching “Brazil” (Mann’s Westwood and Cineplex), the exploding cigar in the face of the future, is like watching the contents of Terry Gilliam’s head erupt in public. Like the magical explosion of consumer goods at the end of “Zabriskie Point,” everything that has ever made an impact on Gilliam seems to be whirling by in this brilliant, exhausting, savagely funny post-Orwellian satire.

“Brazil” has been the subject of heated controversy with its releasing company, Universal. Its release came about abruptly after the film won three awards--best picture, director and screenplay--in the year-end Los Angeles Film Critic’s Assn. voting. The version here is director Gilliam’s own cut.

It has the gentlest little sliver of a plot wound round and round with the flypaper of Gilliam’s observations. A lot of things have gotten caught on that flypaper. Old movies (“The Red Shoes,” “Barbarella”), older movies (“Metropolis,” “The Battleship Potemkin”), today’s headlines (terrorist bombings at Christmastime) and the tailings from a febrile and irrepressible mind.

Gilliam’s targets are the usual Monty Python concerns: modern technology and the men who run it, terrorists, repairmen, bureaucrats, the plastic surgery industry, the ad game and sticklers for detail, wherever they are.

The only thing never to appear in “Brazil” is that country itself. It is only conjured up, in affectionately specious fashion, by the late-’30s song of the same name. In a lush, full-bodied arrangement, it serves as the film’s buoyant, bursting theme and, frequently, the only cheer for blocks around. “Brazil” is richly visionary--even if Gilliam’s extremely bleak vision is enough to require cold compresses and warm toddies before you are feeling yourself again.

Actually, “Brazil” had three writers, more or less in sequence: Gilliam, playwright Tom Stoppard and finally Charles McKeown. But if you have seen so much as a half-hour Monty Python show, for which Gilliam did the distinctive and frequently rude animation, or if “Time Bandits” ever crossed your path, the Gilliam imprint is indelible.

He sets us down with a plop in an extremely Orwellian future. There, in the gray confines of the Ministry of Information, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) lives and works, wishing nothing more than anonymity and quiet, so he can burrow his head in his pillow and get on with his dream life.

Some dreams. With 15-foot wings, silver armor and a hero’s noble aspect, Sam swoops about the clouds in a rapture of flight. He is rewarded by glimpses of an ethereal damosel (Kim Greist) in a few wisps of chiffon, her flowing hair cascading around her shoulders, perpetually in need of rescue.

One of life’s shining innocents, Sam would be absolutely content to continue his life in just this manner, alternately plodding and swooping. His job is absolutely secure. His boss, the Hitler-mustachioed Kurtzmann (Ian Holm), knows Sam for the linchpin he is; the only man who knows exactly how the system functions. Unfortunately, Sam’s socialite mother (TV’s “Who’s the Boss’ ” Katherine Helmond), won’t hear of his languishing in a dead-end job at the ministry. Nothing will do but a promotion to Information and Retrieval, a sinister place whose methods of “retrieval” smack of the SS.

Indeed, we watch an Information and Retrieval squad at work at the film’s opening, a precision operation in which miscreant Mr. Buttle is wrested from the bosom of his family at Christmastime, stuffed into what appears to be a mail sack and hauled away in record time and with maximum devastation to all involved. There is only a slight fly in the operation--literally. A dead fly, dropping into a computer’s works, has turned the name of the wanted man from Tuttle to Buttle.

Tuttle may be a terrorist. (He is, in fact, Robert De Niro, in a small but crucial role as a laconic, stogie-chewing, commando type.) Buttle is absolutely not one.

By the time Sam has shrewedly figured out the error, too many departments have become involved. Face-saving is almost impossible. And besides, Sam’s mother, whose life is divided between meals at chic restaurants and sojourns to her plastic surgeon, has willed his wretched promotion. The wheels have begun to turn. Soon Sam will join his old friend Jack Lint (Michael Palin), a proficient chameleon, over at Retrieval.

Only a Python would make a fly in the ointment literal. And only a man who sent doddering old fogies into action like pirates in the great business-takeover satire that opened “The Meaning of Life” could have spawned “Brazil.”

“Brazil” swirls and glides; a brilliant tracking shot through the Ministry of Information, as hundreds of three-piece-suit types scurry like Dickens’ clerks to their computer screens just in front of the moving camera.

Another sinuous sequence at Retrieval, as its ominous head man (Ian Richardson) leads his chorus of yes men on his grand rounds, double time, as he escorts Sam to the very door of his office. (It is so tiny that he discovers he’s sharing his desk, half and half, with the fellow next door.)

Sam’s dream villain is an enormous samurai warrior, like some vast chess piece whose armor is an intarsia of computer chips. He’s only one of the inspired visuals of the film, in which so much is going on all the time that you know you’ve missed something. A placard, for instance, that proclaims “Suspicion Breeds Confidence.” The shopping mall, full of “Consumers for Christ.” The name of the couturier responsible for Mrs. Lowry’s hats, nothing less than high-heeled pumps perched, heel side up, coquettishly over one eye.

“Brazil” is clotted with visual references, jokes, puns. Flying angels, deadly children from “Barbarella;” the ambiance of “Metropolis,” a yeasty reworking of the Odessa Steps sequence from “The Battleship Potemkin.” And all the while, the actors are proceeding with the utmost seriousness, which is of course the only way to conduct satire. Poor Sam and his angel, who has the corporeal incarnation as a very remote young woman, Jill, who just may be a terrorist, are as hapless as the pair in 1984.

You cannot help but be impressed by the barrage of invention of “Brazil,” by the perfection of its design, costuming, camera work and music. You may also begin to sag slightly under its non-stop cleverness, somewhere in the third inning.

In some ways, “Brazil” is like “Diva”: You feel a brilliant mind at work, packing every single observation its owner ever wanted to make into one single film--and “Brazil” is “Diva” to the hundredth power. A soupcon of restraint next time--only one idea every 3 minutes, not 12--might serve Gilliam better. Occasionally “Brazil” recalls that story of a director and his hyper-inventive star. In exasperation, he finally cautioned her: ‘Don’t do something, just stand there.” ’BRAZIL’

A Universal Pictures release. Producer Arnon Milchan. Co-producer Patrick Cassavetti. Director Terry Gilliam. Screenplay Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown. Camera Roger Pratt. Editor Julian Doyle. Production design Norman Garwood. Original music Michael Kamen. Special effects supervisor George Gibbs. Art directors John Beard, Keith Pain. Sound Bob Doyle. With Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughan, Kim Greist.

Times rated: Mature.

Running time: 2 hours, 11 minutes.