On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 98% based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Brazil, Terry Gilliam's visionary Orwellian fantasy, is an audacious dark comedy, filled with strange, imaginative visuals."[55] On Metacritic, the film received a score of 84 based on 18 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[56]
Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan described the film as "the most potent piece of satiric political cinema since Dr. Strangelove".[15] Janet Maslin of The New York Times was very positive towards the film upon its release, stating "Terry Gilliam's Brazil, a jaunty, wittily observed vision of an extremely bleak future, is a superb example of the power of comedy to underscore serious ideas, even solemn ones."[57]
Roger Ebert was less enthusiastic in the Chicago Sun-Times, giving the film two out of four stars and claiming that it was "hard to follow". He felt the film lacked a confident grasp on its characters' roles in a story "awash in elaborate special effects, sensational sets, apocalyptic scenes of destruction and a general lack of discipline". However, Ebert did say that "there are several scenes in Brazil that show a lot of imagination and effort". Ebert especially enjoyed one scene in which "Sam moves into half an office and finds himself engaged in a tug-of-war over his desk with the man through the wall. I was reminded of a Chaplin film, Modern Times, and reminded, too, that in Chaplin economy and simplicity were virtues, not the enemy."[58]
Colin Greenland reviewed Brazil for Imagine magazine, and stated that it was "a daring, exorbitant Vision, sombrely funny and darkly true."[59]
Accolades
In 2004, Total Film named Brazil the 20th-greatest British movie of all time. In 2005, Time film reviewers Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel included Brazil in an unordered list of the 100 best films of all time. In 2006, Channel 4 voted Brazil one of the "50 Films to See Before You Die", shortly before its broadcast on FilmFour. The film also ranks at number 83 in Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.[60]
Wired ranked Brazil number 5 in its list of the top 20 sci-fi movies.[61] Entertainment Weekly listed Brazil as the sixth-best science-fiction piece of media released since 1982.[62] The magazine also ranked the film No. 13 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films".[63]
The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, for Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction (Norman Garwood, Maggie Gray).[64]
According to Gilliam in an interview with Clive James in his online programme Talking in the Library, Brazil is – to his surprise – apparently a favourite film of the far right in America.[65]
Home media
A directors' cut of Brazil was released on LaserDisc in the United States in December 1993.[66] It has also been released several times by The Criterion Collection, as a five-disc LaserDisc set in 1996, a three-disc DVD set in 1999, and a two-disc Blu-ray set in 2012, all with the same special features: a 142-minute cut of the film (referred to by Gilliam as the "fifth and final cut"), Sheinberg's 94-minute "Love Conquers All" cut for syndicated television, and various galleries and featurettes.
Criterion also released a one-disc, movie-only edition in 2006, while the three-disc set was revised to be compatible with widescreen televisions.
A Blu-ray of the 132-minute US version of the movie was released in the US on 12 July 2011 by Universal Pictures. It contains only that version of the film and no extra features.[67]
