The story of the director’s influence upon the making of Brazil is an abject lesson in why it the “auteur theory” of filmmaking cannot be sustained outside the world of pure academic theory. Not very movies can match the sheer intensity of the drama that played out behind the scenes after principal photograph on Brazil ended. That drama became a war waged between the studio executives and their marketing backgrounds and director Terry Gilliam the director and his creative vision. The full extent of the conflict which existed between the directorial vision of Terry Gilliam and the more mundane profit-oriented interests of the studio is best exhibited by the expensive full page advertisement that Gilliam was moved to buy as the battle lingered on. Framed to take on the appearance of a funeral service announcement, the add which appeared in Daily Variety consisted simply of the imperative query directed toward the Chairman of Universal Studios which had contracted to distribute the film:: "Dear Sid Sheinberg, when are you going to release my film? Signed: Terry Gilliam."
The movie was never likely to set attendance records, and all the marketing in the world was unlikely to change that probability. Gilliam had crafted a latter-day 1984 with his nightmarishly dystopic vision of a near-future at a time when American moviegoers were flocking to the theaters to see time-traveling DeLoreans and feel-good stories of boxers trying to wring one last rousing wave of cheers out their life that was a million to one shot. Gilliam’s vision for Brazil was dark, bizarre, intense, confounding and destined to end on a downbeat note.
It was this last aspect of the vision that so rankled Sheinberg and other executive. Gilliam’s logical ending to his story of one ineffectual citizen’s fight against mind-numbing conformity and authoritarianism was to reveal that his successful personal insurrection against the forces of darkness occurred entirely within his own head. The studios suggested that since everything leading to that moment was steeped in depressing images, why not allow him to actually win and find his place in the mythical idealization of a Brazil which gives the film its title. To many, the studios had a point: ultimately, they argued, Gilliam’s vaunted originality and innovation amounted to nothing more than the oldest cliché in fiction: it was all a dream!
Not surprisingly, those who argued that point missed the point entirely. Gilliam’s ending actually is a happy ending. Of sorts. His protagonist may only have successfully rebelled against the crushing forces of dystopic in his mind, but he proved one very important fact: they can take everything away from but you imagination! Which is a pretty powerfully upbeat statement upon which to reach situation the conclusion of his vision of the film.
It would not matter, however, because the suits being suits were congenitally deprived of the creativity necessary to make that grand philosophical leap. And so the film hit theaters with the “happier ending” preferred by the studios and then proceeded to almost instantly disappear from those theaters as a result of the multitude of empty seats. The DVD revolution which took place within a decade of the film’s original release would eventually allow Gilliam to offer audiences the movie he envisioned, but most of them stayed away in droves from that version as well.
In the wake of a growing interest in George Orwell’s 1984 and other dystopic fictions, perhaps the time has finally arrived for Brazil to find its audience. The magic of technological innovation allows that audience to choose for themselves which ending is more suited to their own vision of the story.
