Criterion gives Terry Gilliam’s masterful ‘Brazil’ a stellar 4K UHD face lift
- Craig Shapiro
- Jul 7
- 5 min read
4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
(1) Jonathan Pryce, left, plays Sam Lowry, an ordinary guy content with his humdrum job in the Department of Records, and Peter Vaughan is Mr. Helpmann, the pompous chief of the Ministry of Information. (2) Sam’s mother, Mrs. Ida Lowry (Katherine Helmond), gets her face stretched for another date with the plastic surgeon. She arranges a promotion for her son to the M.O.I.
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“BRAZIL: THE CRITERION COLLECTION”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray; 1985; “Terry’s Cut,” unrated, adult themes, mild nudity/sexuality, profanity, and violence; “Love Conquers All Cut,” rated R, same
Best extra: The 2012 hour-long documentary, “The Battle of Brazil”
THE LINES were drawn.
When MCA/Universal balked at releasing “Brazil” if Terry Gilliam didn’t make substantial cuts, he promised the powerful studio President/COO Sid Sheinberg that he would “be the recipient of a war that would be more unpleasant than releasing the film in [my] version."
He was as good as his word, even taking out a full-page ad in Weekly Variety asking Sheinberg when it would be released. It was already doing well in Europe, but the studio, which didn’t know what to make of Gilliam’s dystopian nightmare/storybook fantasy/slapstick comedy, wasn’t swayed. It took control of the film and told its editors to excise everything that makes it a classic.
So Gilliam (“Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “The Fisher King,” “12 Monkeys”) went guerrilla. He snuck out a print and arranged a screening at USC. When the studio’s lawyers got wind and said he could only show clips, he drove it 35 miles to the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia and, with the eager assistance of a student projectionist, showed “a clip that was roughly the entire length of the film.”
(1-3) Mrs. Buttle (Sheila Reid) is reading a Christmas story to her daughter (Prudence Oliver) when the Government breaks in and mistakenly arrests her husband (Brian Miller). The arrest official (Simon Jones) reads the charges before he’s hauled off for interrogation. (4&5) Jill Layton (Kim Greist) is upstairs when Mr. Buttle is arrested.
The buzz soon reached the film critics back in L.A. Kenneth Turan, the longtime critic for the Los Angeles Times, was at a screening — held at a gun club — and recalls that he and his colleagues “saw an opportunity to alert the world that a good film was out there. … There was a sense in the room that we were going to do something tangible.”
They did. Two days later, MCA/Universal announced that “Brazil” would be released in L.A. and New York.
And talk about icing. It won best picture and screenplay at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, where the nominees included “Prizzi’s Honor,” and Gilliam was named best director. The great Akira Kurosawa was nominated that year for “Ran.” It also picked up Oscar nods for screenplay and art direction-set decoration.
All this, and more, is recounted in the must-see 2012 documentary “The Battle of Brazil: A Video History,” written and hosted by Jack Mathews, author of “The Battle of Brazil: Terry Gilliam v. Universal Pictures in the Fight to the Final Cut” (2000). That battle, he says, was memorable for any number of reasons: “The best parts were fought in public, the filmmaker won, and it was instructive because it taught us about the way Hollywood works.”
Criterion, God bless them, has left the decision to you — the masterful, slightly trimmed “Terry’s Cut” and the “Love Conquers All Cut,” Universal’s TV-ready hack job, are both included in this latest iteration.
(1&2) Ian Holm is Mr. Kurtzmann, the timid, weak-willed head of the Department of Records. (3-5) Sam escapes the tedium of his job by dreaming he’s a winged warrior rescuing a beautiful woman (Greist).
Jonathan Pryce (“The Two Popes,” “Ronin”) plays Sam Lowry, an ordinary guy content with his humdrum job in the Department of Records, where he escapes the tedium by dreaming of being a winged superhero and rescuing a beautiful woman, until a kind, loving family man is mistakenly arrested, tortured and murdered. To cover for his timid department head Mr. Kurtzmann (Ian Holm, “The Lord of the Rings”), Sam takes a check to the victim’s widow and spots the woman of his dreams — a lorry driver named Jill Layton (Kim Greist, “Manhunter”) who lives upstairs.
Turns out the Government has an eye on Jill, too, because she’s been loudly pushing for an investigation into her neighbor’s death. Sam’s mother, Mrs. Ida Lowry (Katherine Helmond, TV’s “Soap”), a plastic-surgery addict with friends in high places, has been badgering him to accept a promotion she’s arranged to the Ministry of Information. He takes it so he can find Jill.
Others in the exceptional cast include Robert De Niro (insert favorite film) as the rogue repairman and suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle, Bob Hoskins (“The Long Good Friday”) as the government-approved repairman Spoor, Jim Broadbent (“Topsy-Turvy”) as Mrs. Lowry’s gleeful surgeon Dr. Jaffe, Peter Vaughan (“Straw Dogs”) as the pompous Ministry of Information chief Mr. Helpmann, Ian Richardson (“Dark City”) as the shady Mr. Warrenn, and Gilliam’s fellow Python Michael Palin (“A Fish Called Wanda”) as Jack Lint, a cheerful interrogator who is Sam’s best friend.
Those of you who’ve seen “Brazil” can take it from here.
For those who haven’t, Gilliam’s harrowing, absurdist masterpiece — released when sci-fi was going family-friendly with “Ghostbusters” and “Back to the Future” — touches on Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Charles Chaplin, Kurosawa and, most of all, George Orwell’s “1984,” even though Gilliam says he never read it.
And don’t even think of asking how it ends. In a word, it’s divisive, and that’s fine with Gilliam. “I’m a happy guy,” he says in “The Battle of Brazil.” “I don’t want to please everybody.”
(1) Sam gets ready to face another day. (2&3) After leaving work, he chats up his best friend, Jack Lint, an interrogator played by director Terry’s Gilliam’s fellow Python Michael Palin. (4) Jill presses for an investigation of Mr. Buttle’s murder.
VIDEO/AUDIO
Supervised and approved by Gilliam, Criterion’s 4K UHD master of “Brazil” (1.85: 1 aspect ratio) was sourced from the 35mm original camera negative and a 35mm interpositive, and graded in HDR10 and Dolby Vision. (The Blu-ray, 1.78:1 aspect radio, was graded in SDR.) The 4K disc is a significant step up from Criterion’s perfectly fine 2012 release, with deep colors and natural skin tones, crush-free blacks and solid detail.
Everything was encoded onto a 100 GB disc, and the video bitrates varies from the low 50 Megabits per second to nearly 90 Mbps.
The 2.0 surround soundtrack, remastered from the 35mm magnetic track, scores big, too. Dialogue is clear, ambient effects are active and the score by Michael Kamen (“X-Men”) ranges wide and deep.
EXTRAS
All of them were picked up from the 2012 release. No surprise, but start with “The Battle of Brazil.” You won’t be sorry.
A Gilliam commentary is always a must. Here, he covers every base from the film’s mind-boggling design to its many themes. “What Is Brazil?” looks at the production and “The Production Notebook” collects a trove of interviews and video essays. Finally, “A Great Place to Visit, Wouldn’t Want to Live There,” an essay by writer and professor David Sterritt, provides a thorough overview.
— Craig Shapiro
(1) Robert De Niro is Harry Tuttle, the rogue repairman who the Government suspects of being a terrorist. (2) Bob Hoskins, right, and Derrick Connor are the officially approved repairmen Spoor and Dowser. (3-5) Sam finally learns where Jill lives and sets out to find her. He’s undeterred when his car is set afire.
(1) A grieving Mrs. Buttle may only exist in Sam’s imagination. (2-5) Dream Sam faces off with a gigantic samurai made of computer parts. (6) Gilliam makes frequent use of Government-speak signs like “Who Can You Trust?” (7) Sam and Jill go on the run.