Well now I think your description of fantasy is very good. Your view of De Niro's character is also probably very good. I could not make much sense of it, as it made such a brief appearance that it failed to confidently integrate into my mind very well. Brazil is clearly a film I will have to view several times to begin understanding it.
It seemed a surreal but philosophically simple commentary on degenerate government or society in general (communistic, capitalistic or otherwise), government having abandoned all pretense that the minion is anything more than an expendable cog in the machinery. In this machine, humans do not exist, certainly not with the grandeur we (albeit decreasingly) attribute to them currently. De Niro, then, was the soul of a million cogs who fancied themselves capable of reclaiming individual sovereignty. He was a heroic fantasy birthed of a longing for nonconformity. With his "appearance" the hopeful cog escaped, until eventually reality would take its incontrovertible position. Then we see our hero was but a mirage, which is why he slowly vanishes as the bureaucracy engulfs him.
All individualistic hopes are mirages in this film. The protagonist's hope for love was delusional, his struggles to retrieve and employ himself against a degenerate technological system were all petty and hopeless, as once symbolised by his feeble attempt at writing by hand. In Brazil fantasy has escapism value only initially, but as the fact of the system becomes inescapable, fantasy and reality become one (and this is insanity). Fantasy here no longer supports a checking in and out of reality for entertainment or other such enterprises. Within a system that so thoroughly removes value and humanness from its people, fantasy becomes the only logical choice, the only logical way to cope for those who have an ingrained longing not to conform.
I cannot stand firm on much of this, as after all these are impressions stemming from a once viewing in 1985. I suspect my naturally melancholy temperament coupled with my inexperience with this film have led me to believe the film offered no hope whatever-- except via some internal escape from reality, i.e. insanity. |
