Brazil (1985): the texture of our dream-world
In Terry Gillian's Brazil (1985), I think it's tempting to find the easy distinction between dreams and reality. Lowery falls into his fantasies — in which he fights to save a trapped damsel — then emerges into the Kafkaesque hellscape that Gilliam crafts with his eccentric use of fish-eye and the stagy noir-parody tone. Yet, these seemingly distinct worlds so often transgress the other: Lowery's reality is motivated entirely by his fantasy, as the images of reality crystallize in his dreams, and his dreams become part of reality. While it's tempting to cleanly separate the two worlds, I think the film remains just as fascinating when we find the moments which blur the two worlds together into one, the moments when reality takes on the texture of the fantasy and the dream takes and enhances the perceived objects of reality. The final dream sequence is clearly the best example of the collapsing wall between real and fantasy. As Tuttle is devoured by the paper work he
