FAQ for
Brazil (1985) More at IMDbPro »

From the Brazil FAQ v1.3: "The samurai is a huge, monolithic, powerful machine, and is assumed to represent technology." Sam finds his own face behind the mask, which reveals that he was a willing participant in the governmental monstrosity. In the director's commentary, Terry Gilliam suggests that representing Sam's dual nature as such was a play on the word "samurai" by the screenwriter Tom Stoppard--samurai can be read as SAM-U-R-I (Sam, you are I).

From the Brazil FAQ v1.3: "Gilliam's mother once sent him a mask like that, and it haunted him ever since. Gilliam intended the effect of combining the masks and the decaying bodies of the Forces of Darkness (the small, troll-like creatures which Sam sees in his dreams) to be an intermingling of the beginning and ends of life."

From the Brazil FAQ v1.3: "An executive decision maker. . . it has a plunger that can fall to one side of a divider, landing on "YES" or "NO"."

It is named after the song "Brazil" by Geoff Muldaur which Sam is humming in the final scene when Jack and Mr. Helpmann consider him catatonic.

The myth behind the name of the film relates to Terry Gilliam being at a beach in the UK one day. Apparently the weather wasn't particularly great, but a man was sitting on the beach alone listening to the famous song (on a stereo) that we hear in the film. Gilliam was fascinated by the man sitting there despite all the "adversity", and this became the theme and name for the film.