May Film Club

Hey everybody!
Thank you to everyone who made it out to see Samsara, we had a good turnout and good discussion following the screening.

Our film for the month of May will be Terry Gilliams' wonderful film Brazil.

Brazil is a 1985 science fiction fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam.  It was written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard.  The film stars Jonathan Pryce and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins and Ian Holm.  It has been described as a "dystopian satire".  The film centers on Sam Lowry, a man trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living a life in a small apartment, set in a dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines.  Brazil's bureaucratic, totalitarian government is reminiscent of the government depicted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, except that is has a buffoonish, slapstick quality and lacks a Big Brother figure.  Jack Matthews, film critic and author of The Battle of Brazil (1987), described the film as "satirizing the bureaucratic, largely dysfunctional industrial world that had been driving Gilliam crazy all his life".
The film has a 98% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, with 39 out of 40 reviewers giving it positive reviews.  it has received a score of 88 on Metacritic, based on 12 reviews.  Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan described the film as "the most potent piece of satiric political cinema since Dr. Strangelove".  Janet Maslin of The New York Times was very positive towards the film upon its release, stating "Terry Gilliam's Brazil, a jaunty, wittily observed vision of an extremely bleak future, is a superb example of the power of comedy to underscore serious ideas, even solemn ones."  The film was nominated for two Academy Awards; for Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction (Norman Garwood, Maggie Gray).  Other films that drew inspiration from Brazil's cinematography, art design, and/or overall atmosphere include Jean-Pierre Jeunet's and Marc Caro's films Delicatessen (1991) and The City of Lost Children (1995), the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and Alex Proyas' Dark City (1998)

This film is a little bit longer than most of the films we've watched, so I'd like it if everyone could be here as close to 6:00pm as possible, that'll give us a little extra time.  We will be meeting Thursday, May 16th.  I hope to see you all there for this excellent film!

Here's the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wh2b1eZFUM