Brazil

What sets Terry Gilliam’s dystopia going is not a conspiracy but an accounting job. An insect jams a teleprinter, an arrest warrant is misprinted, and the cobbler Buttle is taken instead of the wanted Tuttle. Sam Lowry only learns of it because the state overcharged the family for the interrogation and he must deliver the refund. Tom Stoppard invented that mix up. Norman Garwood says the ducts crawling through every room are not sabotage but Central Services doing bad work: the explosions are maintenance, not terror. Fox released Gilliam’s cut across Europe. Universal held the American rights, and Sid Sheinberg had a happy ending cut for television as Love Conquers All. Gilliam answered with a full page Variety advertisement asking when his film would be released. On 14 December 1985, still unreleased in America, it took best picture, director and screenplay from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association; Universal then put out the shortened cut Gilliam supervised. The Academy nominated it for art direction and for screenplay written directly for the screen, winning neither. A good fit if you want the dream sequences to carry the film and the ending to stop marking which layer you are in. Not for viewers who want Sam’s rescue to be real; in Gilliam’s cut it is a delusion seen from the torture chair.