Brazil (1985)

January 15, 2026

Spoilers ahead. I wrote while watching, so this is very stream-of-consciousness. Take care.

The actress is very cute, but holy this is so undeserved. Our protagonist destroys her whole life and she falls for him??? Also, suits with a hat and a long mantle are such a vibe. The movie looks gorgeous, I love its surreal aspects. It works a lot with perspective tricks, which is cool.

I wonder what this is about, a myth? Maybe a Jungian archetype? Something something, birth of tragedy? This guy’s undeserved lover, undeserved that he got saved, like how many people died to save him and why? He’s not even important. Is the ending meant to be him as some kind of Christ figure taking the debt of everyone onto himself?

Maybe it was a kind of dream all along, like the terrorist being some kind of multiple-personality disorder? Also why does this meme keep happening every 30 minutes where the FBI raids this one guy’s house? Anybody know what meme I’m talking about?

Maybe it’s a psychological thriller, like it’s all in his mind like the movie Boes is afraid? Also, am I the only one who thinks it has Dark Souls elements, with the huge samurai and the little guys with baby masks, holding chains in their hands? What is this ending?????

Oh, okay. It’s a tragedy. That makes it a lot better than the apparently happy ending where they drive off with their truck into nature. 7/10

Edit: I feel like the movie lends itself very much to a Nietzschean lens of interpretation. Maybe I’ll formalize this someday in more detail, but rapid-fire, some themes: Sam’s dream life as a slave-revolt of the imaginary; Jill as alter/inversion/value-transvaluation; bureaucracy as late-modern Apollo; ressentiment; Brazil’s bureaucracy as a Nietzschean “decadent culture.”