Perhaps the great dystopian satire of the cinema, Brazil reveals the foolishness and absurdity of its Brave New World with a dark wit and a robust humor. Jonathan Pryce plays the hapless Sam Lowry as a comic variation on Kafka’s Josef K. As in The Trial (the 1962 Orson Welles adaptation was a strong influence on Gilliam’s film), the logic of Lowry’s tormentors is never clear, but their judgments are inescapable. Monty Python veteran Gilliam manages to simultaneously have you laughing at the absurdity of it all and terrified at the plausibility. It’s a prophetic glimpse of an all-encompassing and self-perpetuating human system, effective in its disorienting (and at times frightening) imagery.
—Anders Bergstrom