Brazil (1985)

The Three Orders of Sam Lowry

Objective Review:

 I found that the scene which clicked for me during the film was one of Sam’s dreams. In his attempts to rescue the woman in his dreams, he encounters a giant samurai, dressed in armor and armed with an enormous spear. Even though the other monsters in his dream world are repulsed by it, Sam rushes in to save the woman. Just as he and the samurai prepare to fight, the samurai vanishes. Confused, Sam turns, looking for his enemy. The giant samurai reappears and succeeds in cutting off part of his wing and sending him scrambling for his life. Regaining his feet, Sam darts forward to strike it with his sword, but again it vanishes. Wary now, Sam turns slowly, and when it reappears he engages it in a brief battle before it again vanishes. After one more skirmish, the giant’s spear becomes stuck in the ground. When Sam charges it, the giant vanishes again, but only briefly. It charges Sam, stopped only by his sword in its foot. The samurai suitably occupied, Sam pries the giant spear from the ground and tears open his opponent’s arm and stomach, causing the giant to scream and fall, flames pouring from its wounds. He then approaches and removes its mask, only to find his own face behind the monster.

Reaction:

I find myself tiring of watching films that do not provide intelligent characters. The film seems disjointed at times, with Sam having a firm hold of the Idiot Ball. While not confusing, the ending of the film became emotionally draining very quickly, particularly after it became obvious that it was only Sam’s fever-dreams during torture.

Interpretation:

In order to understand the film, I turned to Lacan’s three psychoanalytic orders. Brazil displays all three extensively, they all “relate to something significant in [Sam’s] daily sense of the world”, and even Sam himself comes to realize that by the end (Loos).

The imaginary takes hold the moment we see Sam. His home has an impressive set up of alarms, breakfast-makers, and other such tools, and they work so long as Sam’s clock does. His work is busy, men in grey coats hustling up and down, papers being finished and spirited away only to be replaced with others. The government is polite and efficient; the girl who answers the Central Services phone is quick to explain, the quick arrival of Central Services to Sam’s home, the kindness of his father’s old friend in getting Sam a promotion, the arrest of “Archibald Buttle.” Everything in Sam’s world is “situated around the notion of coherence” (Loos).

The reality of the situation is much more dire. The moment that Sam’s clock is off or the electricity fails, he has no way to wake up, and, on time or not, his coffee is poured on his toast, rendering both useless. The moment his boss turns his back, the formerly busy workplace is loud with the sounds of the latest movie. The men seem to put more work into maintaining the image of work than doing actual work, as they are all quite busy again by the time their enraged boss opens the door. Although Central Services’ phone is answered by a live person, that person can do nothing for Sam, she doesn’t know if or when help will arrive and can only repeat the same scripted phrase. When, shortly after his call, two agents from Central Services do arrive, he is forced to turn them away so they do not die, protesting “I’m a stickler for paperwork” as they try to barge into his home. In retaliation for this, they tear his apartment to pieces and freeze it. They might not know he saved their lives, but for all they know his home was invaded by a terrorist and he had no idea. His father’s friend is kind, but Sam is miserable at the promotion all but forced upon him, hating the rush of his new workplace. Lastly, a man loses his life for the sake of a letter. The real world is splintered and fragmented, few things being true when looked at without clouded glasses.

The symbolic world is even clearer. While their imaginary world falls apart around the, the citizens of Sam’s world remain determinedly oblivious. His mother ignores not only his protests against her interference in his life, but also the bombing and the bloody people only feet from her. The agents from Central Services hide behind paperwork, holding up papers to allow them to do as they please with Sam. Mrs. Buttle is offered a receipt for her husband. Only a few characters, such as Tuttle and Jill seem angered with the system. Tuttle has disregarded his paperwork in exchange for doing good work and although Jill is baffled by red tape, she pushes until the government wants her dead.

The film is Sam’s realization of these three orders. For all of his life, he has remained in the imaginary. He even ignores those wounded in bombings until Jill corrects his lack of action, despite it being implied that the bombs are responsible for his father’s death. He is thrust into clinging to the symbolic during the film, desperately trying to accept repeated assurances that the imaginary world is real. He even uses this himself, showing his badge to the guards who would arrest Jill to hold them at bay. During his final scenes, he understands the truth. The world is cruel without reason and apologies to no one. The government is infallible, no matter what. He understands the tragedy of Buttle’s death and the foolishness of Jack’s insistence that everything outside of the norm is evil and connected.
The scene brought this together for me when I realized that the giant samurai was representative of Sam's lack of ability to fight back. The real was that Sam could do nothing against the government alone. He couldn't save Jill, he couldn't help Mrs. Buttle, he couldn't even save himself. In his imaginary world, the samurai was symbolic of his helplessness. Every time he tried to fight back, his target vanished.
Sam was a young man of a good family, content with his lot in life, brought low simply because he found truth. Because he and everyone else were part of a world more imaginary than even his own dreams.

Loos, Amanda. 2002. http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/symbolicrealimaginary.htm

Forcault. The Order of Things. Preface.

Dylan Evans. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis

The Trial (1962)

Miss Burstner and Josef K

Objective Review:

     Shortly after the police leave, Miss Burstner arrives home and is confronted by Josef in the hallway. They have a brief, awkward and Josef accidentally admits that he knows when she is usually home. After this admission, Miss Burstner retreats to her room, him wishing her a happy birthday and she bidding him a mild goodnight. The scene is intentionally made more awkward by the camera focusing along the wall. Following Miss Burstner, Josef knocks sharply on her door and begins to enter, only to find her in her nightgown. He stammers an apology and slinks back to his own room, but the moment his door shuts, increasingly loud knocking is heard. He opens the door to find Miss Burstner, and he attempts to apologize for not waiting for her to answer her own door. Miss Burstner leans against the doorframe, Josef standing behind her, and asks if he’s getting ideas because she knocked on his door, which he refutes, asking if she’d like to come in, as she did knock. She says she cannot come into his room because their landlord wishes to throw her out and always has one ear open. Miss Burstner flops on her bed while Josef lingers in the doorway, during their discussion, he closes the door and she demands he leave it open. Josef sits on the bed, Miss Burstner coming closer, lying next to him. He then kisses her, and Miss Burstner accepts his affections, saying she thinks he’s crazy, that he’s been out drinking. He then tells her he is under arrest, and she suggests that it was a dream. He points out her mother’s pictures, on their side from being handled by the police, but she does not notice their disheveled state, and asks that he leave her mother out of it. Suddenly, she shouts that it might be political, demanding that he leave her out of it, asking what he’s doing in her room. He stammers that she invited him and that he tried to leave her out of it, but they had begun to mess with her mother’s photographs. She rushes to them, furious, and when he says the police were the ones who had looked at them, she shoves him through the connecting door to his room, demanding that he get out, stay out, and leave her alone, even after he’s out of her room. She then shuts the door firmly behind him.

Reaction:

     For me, the overall feel of the film was awkward and confused. It seemed to be made so deliberately, suggested by the choice of a gay actor to play Josef K, the disorienting camera angles, and the unconventional use of focus. It is a film meant to cause thought rather than to be instantly popular. It left me with a melancholy feeling, somewhere between hopelessness and confusion.

Interpretation:

     Post-modernism claims that rationality and logic are not important to attaining knowledge and that knowledge can be contradictory (Williams, 2005). This is a key component to The Trial, where even the accused doesn’t know what he’s accused of. The actions of Josef and Miss Burstner during her discussion with Josef only seem to further this theory.

     We are introduced to two Josefs in this scene, to the idea that knowledge can be contradictory (Kilgore, 2001). The first is the stammering, awkward person we saw during the police scene. When he stops Miss Burstner in the hall, he hesitates in his speech, not even managing to tell her that the police were in her room, which seems to be why he stopped her. It is this Josef who apologizes too much and admits to feeling constantly guilty, even when he hasn’t done anything. The second Josef is an entirely new person to the viewer. He barges into Miss Burstner’s room, shuts the door when they are alone in her room, and kisses her without fear of rejection. We are given two sets of knowledge to work with, two Josefs to compare. This lasts throughout the rest of the film. This holds with the view that there is no single, definable 'self,' that we change depending on who we interact with and the situation (Bammi).

     Miss Burstner’s reactions during this scene are devoid of rationality and logic, as Williams suggests all actions are. Although she seems offended when Josef tells her that he knows when she usually comes in and could easily be furious that he burst into her room without permission, she seems to forget these things the moment Josef answers his door. She curls up against the doorframe and asks if he’s getting ideas because she knocked on his door, making no mention that he thought it appropriate to walk into her room unannounced when she was undressing. When he agrees to not speak of himself, she snaps at him, indicating that she’s not afraid to raise her voice when necessary, but she does not confront him on his rudeness. When he invites her into his room, she refuses, claiming that the landlady already wanted to throw her out and that she could not give her a reason to do so, yet she allows Josef to follow her into her room. She orders him to leave the door open, but says nothing when he shuts it the second time. He tells her that he is under arrest and she seems not to believe him, accusing him of being drunk or dreaming. He points out that her mother’s pictures are on their sides as proof, but she seems not to notice. She doesn’t seem to realize that his arrest would have to be by the police. She begins screaming, asking why he’s dragging her into his trouble and asking why he’s in her room, although she had no protests to him being in her room before, even kissing him. It is only when he specifically mentions the police and that they handled her mother’s pictures that she reacts, shoving him through the connecting door into his own room and continuing to scream at him to get out and leave her alone. Her actions do not make sense from one moment to the next, following the theory that actions do not cause specific reactions (Kilgore).

     Kilgore asserts that knowledge is tentative and fragmented, and not always rational; that it is socially constructed and contextual. Miss Burstner’s actions seem to agree with this. Rather than piecing together Josef’s story from the bits of knowledge she has – he is under arrest, her mother’s pictures, and his needing to appear before a commission – he must specifically state that the police are involved before she understands. Instead, she uses her context to put together a story that Josef repeatedly refutes. She is just coming home, drunk and tired from her nightclub, and when he says he’s under arrest, she thinks he’s drunk or was asleep. Rather than using a rational perspective, she uses her personal context to create a story that makes the most sense to her. Postmodernism suggests that we all do this. There is no one truth, that Josef is being charged with a specific crime, that the police came, and that he is under arrest. There is only contextual truth. The rest of the movie furthers this notion.

James Williams, Understanding Poststructuralism (Acumen, 2005).

Deborah Kilgore, Critical and Postmodern Perspectiveson Adult Learning, 2001

Dr. Vivek R. Bammi, Postmodernism and Theory of Knowledge