"I want to talk to you about DUCTS" (in Brazil)

Brazil (DV165)

This blog post is presented in new LINK-A-VISION.

Follow the links for surprises galore!

Terry Gilliam works with symbols like no other filmmaker alive or dead. A result of his artistic background, Gilliam has the ability to create a visual vocabulary on screen that strengthens his script. Since film is purely a visual medium, it is important to have creators that can boil the essence of the words on the page down into striking visual metaphors that unconsciously explain the motivations of the characters and the type of world they exist in. Brazil is heavily laden with these cues and most are so subtle that it takes many viewings to untangle all of them. But out of the many symbols Gilliam uses in his mid-80’s masterpiece Brazil, the DUCTS are the most striking

Filmmaking, in general, is an expensive and well-controlled business. The director often finds themselves at war with producers who care only about getting their investment back and making a profit on the film. Because of the rigidness of the industry, very few pointless images are captured to celluloid. Each shot costs money, and as such there should not be anything extraneous within the frame. At first, in Brazil, there seems to be a lot of non-sequitors that serve no function past visual or comedic enjoyment. This statement is very far from true, although there may be some tenuous symbols, Gilliam spends lots of time on the minutest of details exhibited in and around the characters in his fictional world.

Take the aforementioned ducts: upon first seeing the film the audience may think that ducts are there to add Python-esque sur-reality, a silly joke that helps to make the visual frame more interesting. This is a misnomer; they are SO important Gilliam begins his two hour and sixteen minute epic with ducts. Even before the audience has met the dreaming, Quixotian persona of principle character, Sam Lowry, Gilliam shows us a commercial for Central Services, a giant government megalith that seems to be in charge of the maintenance of the ducts. To the observant viewer, the commercial gives many clues as to where the film is heading: “Hi there,” says the central services spokesman, “I want to talk to you about ducts. Do your ducts seem old fashioned, out of date? Central Services new duct designs are now available in hundreds of different colors to suit your individual taste. Hurry now, while stocks last, to your nearest Central Services show room. Designer colors to suit your demanding taste.”

Seems rather innocuous, but in the purely capitalistic monologue Gilliam is letting us in on the state of the unwieldy and paranoid government. These ducts are a surrogate for that government and the spokesman is telling his audience, although you can not change the government – it is already there, as old and clunky as it is, it can no longer be uninstalled – you can instead “dress” your government up in many different colors and coverlets. The citizens do not have an open democracy, so in order to feel they have some control they are given the opportunity to decorate their ducts. It is also interesting that the spokesman mentions ducts that are old fashioned and out of date, possibly inferring that the government suffers the same issue in its de-connectedness to its citizenry.

Throughout the movie, in public shops and private houses, ducts take over everything; they are falling out of the sky, leading to unknown and strange places. They fill the ceiling and take over all free space. Although it seems the citizens have gotten used to them, the ducts are constantly in the way of them living a quiet, private existence -- symbolizing the government’s overt encroachment into all the facets of the people’s life. Just as you can not look around without being reminded of the paperwork-fascism of Gilliam’s Ministry of Information, the characters can not look around without the ducts pulsating over them and invading all of their living quarters.

Almost all of the places that have ducts are not set-up to actually use them in a utilitarian fashion. Instead, it seems the ducts were quickly and sloppily installed, meaning the “big daddy” government in the film was probably quickly and sloppily installed into power. Maybe that is why the Ministry of Information seems so paranoid and why there are “terrorists” that are working against the government (although honestly I am of the opinion that there are no terrorists in Brazil, just false flags and faulty technology). To strengthen this idea, we can look at Sam’s apartment or flat, which seems to be of a much newer type. There, all the technical aspects are built directly into the walls, and it’s only when Sam’s central air breaks down are we given a look at all the hidden mechanics behind the walls. When Central Services shows up at his apartment to “fix” the issue, Sam’s flat becomes completely taken over by what should have remained invisible -- the almost organic, circulatory duct system. As a counterpoint, Sam’s mother’s apartment is extremely old and is not set up to hide the ducts; they snake around all of her antiques and furniture, looking extremely out of place, as do they at the older department stores and restaraunts.

Finally, let’s just take a look at the official definition of “Duct.” This is from Answers.com :

Ducts (n.)
1. An often enclosed passage or channel for conveying a substance, especially a liquid or gas. …
2. A tube or pipe for enclosing electrical cables or wires.
[Latin ductus, act of leading, from past participle of dūcere, to lead.]

What impresses me the most about the above is the epistemology of the word, it comes beginning to end, lead us through Gilliam’s film; ducts are there with us at each important point in the story. Sam meets Harry Tuttle, a rogue heating engineer, when his central air is broken. Tuttle is classified as a terrorist because he wants to work on the ducts without having to do paperwork. Sam loses from the Latin ductus and means the “act of leading,” which slaps the fact across your face that the ducts are tied to the government’s inability to lead in a useful way. Ducts are enclosed systems, much like Brazil’s world -- even when Sam is outside it feels like he is indoors. The Ministry of Information is an enclosed world, the head (Helpmann) enters his penthouse office through an elevator located in the bowels of MOI – the lift could be seen as a duct and although Helpmann moves among them, he never has to be bothered by all the lowly drones. The ducts, from his house due to faulty ducts and lack of appropriate paperwork. Each time we go to the Ministry of Information there are large vacuums connected by ducts sucking up all the dirt (yet another metaphoric symbol). Ducts even send information from one part of the MOI to another and Sam’s final breakdown begins with his destruction of those paperwork carrying ducts, much like when Tuttle switches the air and sewer tubes at Sam’s flat, Sam’s vandalism of the ducts is a direct assault upon the body of the beast, an organic upheaval – the butt where the mouth should be and vice versa.
The only place in Sam’s life that ducts do not interfere is with his dream woman, Jill. Could this be yet another level of attraction that ties the two together? But, as is proven by the ending, the ducts do not care about being ignored or exposed and Sam pays the ultimate price for his actions against the system.

Brazil is a very intricately put together film and all the little pieces that Gilliam gives you total up to a world with parts missing. It is easily one of the best movies ever made and in it Gilliam is challenging the viewer to connect the dots of the plot by themselves. All the clues are there, it is just a matter of how well the audience can read them. Gilliam best metaphor is his use of ducts, which he employs in a very expressionistic fashion, allowing them to symbolize a lot about the government, from its paranoid encroachment upon its citizens to its inability to function correctly. Instead of telling us, Gilliam shows us, that is the essence of a visual art like film, and as viewers, our job is to enjoy and decipher them. Brazil will keep you lost in the large intestine of its never ending system of symbolic ducts and oppressive tubing, a trip that would make anyone crazy.



Here are the other Terry Gilliam films in the TLC's collection:

With Monty Python's Flying Circus:
Monty Python's Flying Circus, Volumes 4, 16, 17, 18 (VH415, 416, 417, 418)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (VH4556)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (DV88)
Solo:
Time Bandits (VH6122, 6205)
The Fisher King (DV339)
Twelve Monkeys (VH6583)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (DV1340-1341)
The Brothers Grimm (DV2449)
Tideland (DV3767-3768 & 3769-3770)

Terry Gilliam is currently in production on a film that seems like a return to his earlier dream trilogy (of which Brazil and Time Bandits are a part) called The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

written by Phoenix "Brazil is only, like, one of my most favorited movies eh-ver." Mangus