Brazil is a dystopian science-fiction black comedy film [ 9 ] [ 10 ] directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown , and Tom Stoppard. The film centres on Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living 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 satire of technocracy , bureaucracy , hyper-surveillance , corporate statism , and state capitalism is reminiscent of George Orwell 's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , [ 11 ] [ 12 ] [ 13 ] and it has been called " Kafkaesque " [ 14 ] as well as absurdist. Jack Mathews, a film critic and the author of The Battle of Brazil , described the film as "satirizing the bureaucratic, largely dysfunctional industrial world that had been driving Gilliam crazy all his life".
Though a success in Europe, the film was unsuccessful in its initial North American release. It has since become a cult film. In , a poll of actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the 24th best British film ever.
In a dystopian, polluted , hyper- consumerist , overbearing, bureaucratic, totalitarian future based on elements of the 20th century , Sam Lowry is a low-level government employee who frequently dreams of himself as a winged warrior saving a damsel in distress. One day, shortly before Christmas , an insect becomes jammed in a teleprinter , which misprints a copy of an arrest warrant it was receiving.
This leads to the arrest and death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle instead of suspected terrorist Archibald Tuttle. Sam discovers the mistake when he discovers the wrong bank account had been debited for the arrest.
