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Yesterday's party was kind of a bust; only ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prusik showed up for a few hours in the afternoon. But that reminded me that I still had his copy of the Brazil Criterion Collection DVD, which I'd borrowed like 3 or 4 years ago. So last night I took the opportunity to watch the commentary tracks and all the extras. I had somehow forgotten that it was a Christmas movie, so that was a nice coincidence.
Terry Gilliam's commentary was fun; it ranged from minutiae about how certain effects were done to rants about the movie industry to philosophical musings. He pointed out a few neat little things I hadn't noticed, like the graffiti on the "SHANGRILA TOWERS" sign adding an O and L, or the fact that the woman standing in the commuter-cage was pregnant and one-legged (yet none of the men would give up their seat for her). Jon Blow used to point out how there were so many crosses in the movie, which I always took to mean that it was a crucifiction allegory (with Sam as the Christ figure—his stigmata in the final scene supports that). But Gilliam talked about the crosses on the doors into the grand building where Mrs. Terrain's funeral was held (and another much bigger cross on the front of the building that he took off but wishes he had left on) as simply a sign that it represented heaven. One kind of eerie moment was when he was talking about when Tuttle and Sam blew up the Ministry and instead of it just being an explosion, it was a snowstorm of paper, and all I could think of was all the paper debris from the WTC collapse. At one point he seemed to suggest that the explosion in the lingerie shop wasn't actually a terrorist bomb but just another technological malfunction; I hadn't ever considered the idea that the terrorists were just a fabrication by the Ministry of Information.
No light was shed on the question of who "JH" was. The FAQ refers to Helpmann's first name as both Conrad (in the singing telegram) and Gene (on a present label) so maybe J was yet another intended first name for him. Four different people worked on the script so it's plausible that it was just a continuity problem. The "ERE I AM JH" thing came from Tom Stoppard; the bonus features had interviews with him in 1986 and in 1996, which was neat to see. I hadn't realized he was born in Czechoslovakia; his accent makes him sound like a German dandy. Another bonus feature had detailed comparisons between the different revisions of the script; I only browsed through them, but one thing I noticed was speculation of a Hamlet reference: Sam's father is the "ghost in the machine", and Helpmann may have killed him and usurped his position of power in the Ministry. I think this was mentioned in discussion of a Charles McKeown revision, but it would make more sense for this to be Stoppard's touch, as the author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
The commentary for the Sid Sheinberg "Love Conquers All" cut was rather wooden, clearly being read from prepared material by "Gilliam expert" David Morgan. Still, it was fascinating to see how even the minor cuts and rearrangements changed so much of the subtext and characterization. It was also interesting to see the extra footage, like some of Jill's extra lines, and the whole alternate scene in Jack Lint's office without his daughter, which made him seem somewhat stupid and easily deceived by the more heroic Sam. There's also a short clip of Jack being shot in the torture chamber, but shown from behind rather than from Sam's point of view, making it seem like it actually happened rather than being part of Sam's hallucination. Which makes me wonder why that clip even exists—was Gilliam himself not entirely sure while filming whether it was a hallucination or not?
prusik showed up for a few hours in the afternoon. But that reminded me that I still had his copy of the Brazil Criterion Collection DVD, which I'd borrowed like 3 or 4 years ago. So last night I took the opportunity to watch the commentary tracks and all the extras. I had somehow forgotten that it was a Christmas movie, so that was a nice coincidence.Terry Gilliam's commentary was fun; it ranged from minutiae about how certain effects were done to rants about the movie industry to philosophical musings. He pointed out a few neat little things I hadn't noticed, like the graffiti on the "SHANGRILA TOWERS" sign adding an O and L, or the fact that the woman standing in the commuter-cage was pregnant and one-legged (yet none of the men would give up their seat for her). Jon Blow used to point out how there were so many crosses in the movie, which I always took to mean that it was a crucifiction allegory (with Sam as the Christ figure—his stigmata in the final scene supports that). But Gilliam talked about the crosses on the doors into the grand building where Mrs. Terrain's funeral was held (and another much bigger cross on the front of the building that he took off but wishes he had left on) as simply a sign that it represented heaven. One kind of eerie moment was when he was talking about when Tuttle and Sam blew up the Ministry and instead of it just being an explosion, it was a snowstorm of paper, and all I could think of was all the paper debris from the WTC collapse. At one point he seemed to suggest that the explosion in the lingerie shop wasn't actually a terrorist bomb but just another technological malfunction; I hadn't ever considered the idea that the terrorists were just a fabrication by the Ministry of Information.
No light was shed on the question of who "JH" was. The FAQ refers to Helpmann's first name as both Conrad (in the singing telegram) and Gene (on a present label) so maybe J was yet another intended first name for him. Four different people worked on the script so it's plausible that it was just a continuity problem. The "ERE I AM JH" thing came from Tom Stoppard; the bonus features had interviews with him in 1986 and in 1996, which was neat to see. I hadn't realized he was born in Czechoslovakia; his accent makes him sound like a German dandy. Another bonus feature had detailed comparisons between the different revisions of the script; I only browsed through them, but one thing I noticed was speculation of a Hamlet reference: Sam's father is the "ghost in the machine", and Helpmann may have killed him and usurped his position of power in the Ministry. I think this was mentioned in discussion of a Charles McKeown revision, but it would make more sense for this to be Stoppard's touch, as the author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
The commentary for the Sid Sheinberg "Love Conquers All" cut was rather wooden, clearly being read from prepared material by "Gilliam expert" David Morgan. Still, it was fascinating to see how even the minor cuts and rearrangements changed so much of the subtext and characterization. It was also interesting to see the extra footage, like some of Jill's extra lines, and the whole alternate scene in Jack Lint's office without his daughter, which made him seem somewhat stupid and easily deceived by the more heroic Sam. There's also a short clip of Jack being shot in the torture chamber, but shown from behind rather than from Sam's point of view, making it seem like it actually happened rather than being part of Sam's hallucination. Which makes me wonder why that clip even exists—was Gilliam himself not entirely sure while filming whether it was a hallucination or not?