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List Price: $14.98Amazon.com's Price: $9.99 You Save: $4.99 (33%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780783225906
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0783225903
Label: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Universal Studios
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 31, 1998
Running Time: 143 minutes
Sales Rank: 2151
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: December 18, 1985
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly branding poor Sam as a miscreant.
The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously screened his cut for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who named it the best movie of 1985 and virtually embarrassed Universal into releasing it. This DVD version of Brazil is the special director's cut that first appeared in Criterion's comprehensive (and expensive) six-disc laser package in 1996. Although the DVD (at a fraction of the price) doesn't include that set's many extras, it's still a bargain. --Jim Emerson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Terry Gilliam's vastly underrated masterpiece
This is a masterpiece of a movie, one that a director can only accomplish once in a lifetime, and has to be watched without distraction. For young viewers who got used to today's nausea inducing camera shots and ultra quick half second edits, the pacing could come off as ponderous at first. One one level, it's a beautiful and even by today's computerized standards awesome cinematic masterpiece, one that's done without any 3D graphics at all, and even trying to imagine some of the scenes being constructed ... Read More
Rating: - Weird, wacky, wonderful
There aren't too many movies like "Brazil" around. It's been assigned to the category "steampunk" but I'm not sure that is correct- it has some cyberpunk attributes as well. Anyway, the labels aren't too important. What matters is the clever 3-way mix of human story, technology fantasy/satire, and sharp cynicism about the future of society.
Imagine a version of "1984" where everything is pretty much governed by the "information Ministry." But rather than being a horrifyingly efficient organ ... Read More
Rating: - A Remarkable Achievement
What can I possibly say about this movie that hasn't already been said? I'm just sitting here, a day later, still blown away.
Made in 1985, its predictions of a techno-future are eerily prescient while at the same time looking way cooler. Or more probably filming was happening in 1984, since it has shades of that fine novel. A hint of Clockwork Orange...
And really, comparing it to anything else is just wrong.
We have the menacing future, yet we have some powerfully ... Read More
Rating:  - 1984 1/2
Terry Gilliam says that the working title for what became "Brazil" was "1984 1/2," a funny reference to the fact that the film was inspired by Orwell's 1984. Although Gilliam claims that he never actually read the novel, it's hard to take him seriously. "Brazil" has the same drab, grimy, proletarian feel that the novel exudes; everyday life is relentlessly monitored by shadowy powers-that-be (the visual metaphor of the ever-present ductwork gestures at this); terrorism is a fact of life; everyone is considered ... Read More
Rating: - "1984" Meets "Brave New World"
Brazil is not a crowd-pleaser to rent on video night with your friends. It is not a date movie, an action flick to watch with the boys, or any other genre of film you'll see multiple copies of at the local Blockbuster.
So, what is it? Brazil is vision of a chilling future, and many compare it with Orwell's classic "1984". Jackbooted security police, institutionalized systematic torture, and other grim motives appear throughout the story, so this is understandable. However, instead of sheer Orwellian ... Read More
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