SOURCE: “Mugging for the Camera: Narrative Strategies in Brazil,” in Literature Film Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 3, 1996, pp. 288–92.

In the following essay, Fister explains that Gilliam's use and misuse of cues in Brazil makes the viewer rethink what is “real” in the film.

Brazil has a curious history. Terry Gilliam, a former member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, created a dystopia so devastating, and yet so compelling, that Universal refused to release it without a massive editing job, reshaping it to match the expectations of the public—and the studio marketing strategists. Gilliam would not agree to their changes and made a dramatic and highly public stand, ultimately winning control over editing, but guaranteeing a lack of marketing support that doomed the film at the box office. He remarked afterward that life was imitating art in a nightmarish way.

It isn’t surprising that the film would dismay a...