Brazil gets the special edition treatment in December

Steve Withers

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Criterion to release Terry Gilliam’s dystopian masterpiece with a host of extras

In the dystopian masterpiece Brazil, Jonathan Pryce plays a daydreaming everyman who finds himself caught in the soul-crushing gears of a nightmarish bureaucracy. This cautionary tale by Terry Gilliam, one of the great films of the 1980s, now ranks alongside anti-totalitarian works by the likes of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. And in terms of set design, cinematography, music, and effects, Brazil, a nonstop dazzler, stands alone. The film has a complex history, with Terry Gilliam being forced to fight a very public battle with Universal to get his version of the film released. As a result there exists three different versions of the film, the first is the international version, which runs 142 minutes and is sometimes referred to as the ‘director’s cut’. This is the version familiar to UK audiences but there is also a US cut that is about 10 minutes shorter and misses a few scenes but is essentially the same story. Then there is Universal’s 94 minute cut which has a happy ending and is sometimes called the ‘Love Conquers All’ version. Whilst not widely seen, this version does show how clever editing can completely change the tone and plot of a film.

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Criterion’s special edition of Brazil is released on the 4th of December in the US and comes with a host of amazing extras:

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL FEATURES:
  • Restored high-definition digital transfer of Terry Gilliam’s 142-minute director’s cut, supervised by Gilliam, with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 surround soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Audio commentary by Terry Gilliam
  • What Is Brazil?, a thirty-minute on-set documentary by Rob Hedden
  • The Battle of Brazil: A Video History, a sixty-minute documentary by author and film writer Jack Mathews about the controversy surrounding the film’s release
  • The “Love Conquers All” version of Brazil, a ninety-four-minute cut of the film produced by the studio in an attempt to make it more commercial, with commentary by Brazil expert David Morgan
  • The Production Notebook, a collection of supplements featuring a trove of Brazil-iana from Gilliam’s personal collection: a short documentary on the screenplay, featuring interviews with screenwriters Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard; Gilliam’s storyboards for unfilmed dream sequences, animated and narrated by Morgan; visual essays on the film’s production design and special effects; a visual essay on Brazil’s costumes, narrated by costume designer James Acheson; and interviews with Gilliam and composer Michael Kamen on the score
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by Jack Matthews on the DVD edition and a booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Sterritt on the Blu-ray edition
 

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