Brazil (film)

Brazil (first released on February 20, 1985, in France) is a dystopic, steampunk, black comedy feature film directed by Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. It was written by Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. It stars Jonathan Pryce, and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm. Co-writer McKeown also has a small role.

The film evokes the melancholy, dreamlike quality of its theme song, an English translation of a 1939 Brazilian song, "Aquarela do Brasil". Gilliam was inspired by this song to create the fictional totalitarian government and the overall dystopian mood of the film.

Jack Mathews, movie critic and author of The Battle of Brazil (1987), characterized the film as "satirizing the bureaucratic Brazil's government totalitarian bureaucracy is analogous to Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.