Birthday of the Brazil
On February 20, 1985, in France and in West Berlin, as part of an out-of-competition screening at the Berlin International Film Festival, almost simultaneously, a Terry Gilliam's film Brazil premiered.
As for the name of the film, which coincides with the name of the South American country, Terry Gilliam himself in an interview with Salman Rushdie, explained it this way:
"Brazil came specifically from the time, from the approaching of 1984. It was looming. In fact, the original title of Brazil was 1984½. Fellini was one of my great gods and it was 1984, so let’s put them together. Unfortunately, that bastard Michael Radford did a version of 1984 and he called it 1984, so I was blown. And so Brazil became the title—because of the song."
Immediately after the premiere, a rather successful movie rental began in European countries. But not in the USA. The fact is that the movie company 20th Century Fox was engaged in movie distribution in Europe and Asia, while in the USA the distribution had to be performed by the Universal Pictures, which leadership, specifically Sid Steinberg, did not like the ending of the film. He didn’t like it because it did not contain a happy end that was canonical for American film production. He demanded that Gilliam redo the final. And when Gilliam refused, he hired others to do so. As a result, 45 minutes of screen time from the director's version was replaced and the total duration of the film was reduced from 143 minutes to 131 minutes. And in such a castrated version the film was released on the screens of US cinemas only 10 months after the European premiere.
However, as Janet Maslin, the New York Times movie observer, noted in her review of the film, even in December 1985, the film was not supposed to be released on the screens of American cinemas. Only under pressure from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association did Universal Pictures release the film.
However, although the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded its first prize to the film as the best film of the year, for the best screenplay and best director (moreover, Akira Kurosawa with his film "Ran" was also a participant in the competition for the first prize for directing ), not all film critics enthusiastically accepted “Brazil”. For example, Roger Ebert rated the film with just two out of 4 stars. In his review of the film, he wrote:
"Just as George Orwell's 1984 is an alternate vision of the past, present and future, so "Brazil" is a variation of Orwell's novel. The movie happens in a time and place that seem vaguely like our own, but with different graphics, hardware and politics. Society is controlled by a monolithic organization, and citizens lead a life of paranoia and control. Thought police are likely to come crashing through the ceiling and start bashing dissenters. Life is mean and grim.....While Orwell's lean prose was translated last year into an equally lean and dour film, "Brazil" seems almost like a throwback to the psychedelic 1960s, to an anarchic vision in which the best way to improve things is to blow them up.....Gilliam apparently has had no financial restraints. Although "Brazil" has had a checkered history since it was made (for a long time, Universal Pictures seemed unwilling to release it), there was a lot of money available to make it. The movie is awash in elaborate special effects, sensational sets, apocalyptic scenes of destruction and a general lack of discipline. It's as if Gilliam sat down and wrote out all of his fantasies, heedless of production difficulties, and then they were filmed - this time, heedless of sense."
However, it is possible that members of the Los Angeles film critics Association and Roger Ebert watched different versions of the film. The first ones probably watched the full, "European" version at semi-underground private screenings organized for them by Terry Gilliam himself. And Ebert probably "got" the official version with a typically American blissful ending, and this blissfulness increased the feeling of psychedelic confusion. Who knows? It is no accident that James Berardinelli, comparing the two versions, calls the "American" version a "bastardization", which is more suitable for the stamped name of the type "Love Conquers All".
In Soviet cinemas, the film "Brazil" was not shown. Neither in the one nor in the other version.
Universal Pictures' decision to standardize the film's finale affected its commercial performance. With a budget of 15 million dollars, the box office in the United States was just under 10 million dollars.
However, commercial indicators do not reflect the audience's assessment of this film. 69% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this movie from 8 to 10. However, it is difficult to say which version they watched.
Taking into account the above, according to FilmGourmand, the rating of the film "Brazil" is 7.860, and it occupies the 911th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
