REPO YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)
By:
April 5, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of “offbeat” movies from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
BRAZIL | TERRY GILLIAM | 1985
I was in my mid-twenties when I first saw Brazil, shortly after it came out. I was working a long-term temp job as a paralegal clerk for a big San Francisco law firm, and my officemates and I took an unauthorized afternoon break to catch a matinee.
I remember the following things from that viewing. First and foremost, the Schiaparelli-esque shoe hat, and actress Katherine Helmond having her face madeover with plastic wrap and bulldog clips. Also: the pneumatic tubes and anthropomorphic ducts running amok in home and office; and, of course, the floating dream girl, whose presence I found vaguely threatening. Brazil was billed as a dark comedy, but I don’t remember laughing. I’m pretty sure that the word “dystopian” was not yet in my vocabulary. And the concept of a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” was still decades away.
I knew that audiences were supposed to laugh at the old lady with a shoe on her head vainly trying to stretch her face back to its former glory (almost 40 years later, I relate to this scene more than I care to admit). The dream girl was a sexy alternative, young and firm and alluring. That I found her threatening was likely due to the fact that my boyfriend was emotionally unfaithful, forever instigating relationships with other women (all of them, in my mind, cooler and thinner than me), then telling me it was all in my head when I complained.
Watching the film now, I’m shocked that I didn’t relate more to Jill Layton (Kim Greist), the real-life counterpart of protagonist Sam Lowry’s (Jonathan Pryce) dream girl, a short-haired truck driver in a boilersuit and leather jacket. Sam’s fantasies about saving the ultra-femme dream girl from baby-faced demons break up his otherwise stultifying life as a mid-level bureaucrat in a totalitarian surveillance state. When he catches a glimpse of Jill, who’s come to authorities’ attention for trying to assist the widow of a man wrongfully abducted and killed by the state, creepy Sam doesn’t hesitate to dig into her file.
Even under threat, Jill is no damsel in distress. When Sam forces his way into the cab of her truck, she lets him know that nobody touches her without permission. When he gingerly professes his love for her, she mocks him, then shoves him out of the truck, only relenting when she fears she’s killed him in a steampunk meet-cute.
But when they finally spend a night together, Sam fantasizes about the longhaired dreamgirl, not the short-haired Jill he wakes up with, a situation that may have reminded me all too much of my own.
REPO YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Annie Nocenti on AFTER HOURS | Lynn Peril on BRAZIL | Mandy Keifetz on BODY DOUBLE | Carlo Rotella on ROBOCOP | Marc Weidenbaum on GROUNDHOG DAY | Erik Davis on REPO MAN | Mimi Lipson on STRANGER THAN PARADISE | Josh Glenn on HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING | Susan Roe on HOUSEKEEPING | Gordon Dahlquist on SOMETHING WILD | Heather Quinlan on EATING RAOUL | Anthony Miller on MIRACLE MILE | Karinne Keithley Syers on BETTER OFF DEAD | Adam McGovern on WALKER | Ramona Lyons on MILLER’S CROSSING | Vanessa Berry on WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? | Elina Shatkin on NIGHT OF THE COMET | Susannah Breslin on MAN BITES DOG | Tom Nealon on DELICATESSEN | Lisa Jane Persky on RUMBLE FISH | Dean Haspiel on WEIRD SCIENCE | Heather Kapplow on HEATHERS | Micah Nathan on BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA | Nicholas Rombes on SLACKER | Mark Kingwell on WITHNAIL AND I.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!