Notes on David Lodge's Thinks...

In a novel of ideas, David Lodge explores the literary implications when talking about the notion of Self in relation to consciousness - or the fundamental and inostensible quality that differentiates the homo sapien from other living entities. In Thinks... the theme and dialogue unfolds as a polemic debate between a narrative, literary approach, represented by writer-in-residence, Helen Reed and a scientific one represented by notorious womanizer and Professor and Director of Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive Science, Ralph Messenger.

The text is an intelligent exploration of narratives, which is apt, given that the central motif of Thinks... is the idea of the self and the different ways to access it. Written in a first-person, stream-of-consciousness style are Messenger's verbal narrations into a recorder, first, and later a voice-detection software. No doubt his ambitious techy gadgets are a direct reflection of his high opinion of science. His entries are associative, disorganized and circulatory in nature, and he rambles mostly about sex and women. Interestingly, Messenger steers easily from lewd and personal observations (which are quite humourous) to high-brow subjects with dense vocabulary and jargon.

Helen Reed's thoughts are recorded in a traditional diary-entry format. Her neat, concise, coherent style questions Messenger's mess. She is much less associative than thematic, and behind her control over her words one senses a chaotic turbulence of emotions - a result of her husband's recent death. Reed is more concerned with recording events than any real analysis of the people she meets. Sometimes, we catch an elaboration of an episode fleetingly mentioned in Ralph's recording, and vice versa. The journal entries are playful and illuminating in this way, often playing ball with the reader.

The many polemic debates about the issue of Self center around conversations between Ralph and Helen. For Helen, the Self is unrepeatable, inherent and intrinsic; it is an almost mystical element that is tied to the idea of the soul. Ralph's rejection of these terms is unsurprising. The mystery is reduced to a network of neurons reacting with chemicals, brain activity that can be replicated in a robot, who can be taught to feel, think, cry, experience grief, etc. Textually, the two opinions cross paths with a clever twist. Reed uses conversations with Ralph as creative writing exercises for her students. Thus, a scientific, jargon-laden academic paper on 'What Is It Like To Be A Bat?' transforms into a series of witty first-person accounts of bats. As though to add insult to injury, they are written in imitation of famous authors (Rushdie, Welsh, Amis, Beckett).

For a small window, linguistics lecturer Dr. Robyn Penrose, protagonist of Lodge's Nice Work, makes a guest appearance at as a guest lecturer. Reed comments about Penrose in her diary, "...found her much more sympathetic than I expected. I don't think this was because she had read some of my novels and spoke intelligently about them. She has a daughter aged four whose father doesn't seem to be in the picture and is much preoccupied with the logistic problems of being a single parent and the head of Communictions and Cultural Studies at Walsall". So here the problem of "I wonder what happened to Robyn Penrose..." is solved, once and for all. The level of self-consciousness in the text, I suppose, is not a coincidence, given the subject matter. But it certainly enriches the reading experience.

It is in voyeuristic ways like these that the text explores the processes of consciousness and the self. Spontaneous and shifting, it occasionally recedes into a memory, which in turn elicits further recounts of the past. In a sense, Messenger's stream-of-consciousness entries could be said to be a more accurate depiction of the natural thought process; they are uncensored and uninhibited, unlike Helen's control over her form and subject. At the same time, it is unfair to punish Helen simply because her recordings are not as chaotic as Messenger's. Is it not presumption when we legitimize one method of identification over another? The self as chaotic, uncensored, unorganized is guilty of being classified as a stereotype which makes it an inaccurate representation. Thinks..., I think, can be considered a metaconscious text. This is how title of the novel is important. It alludes to the thinking bubbles floating over characters in comics. Neither character can know with any certainty what the other is thinking but the reader sees all and knows all. It is a smart text that uses its own subject matter as art. An exploration of the exploration of consciousness? Messenger and Reed explore their own minds, we explore theirs. Trust Lodge to come up with something like that.

Tolkien's The Hobbit: Story of a Fairytale

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is often overlooked in the light of his mammoth achievement, Lord of The Rings. The later may be more epic in its approach but it would be unfair to deny the small but magnificent achievement of The Hobbit its right place in fantasy literature. The return of Bilbo Baggins from his journey to the Lonely Mountains marks the conclusion of a little person's adventure. Yet only when seen in a historical chronology does it gather real significance. The accidental discovery of the Ring in Gollum's cave occurs as early in the text as its fifth chapter, putting the Baggins name on the trajectory of revolutionary events and inspires the creation of possibility of a new world.

On to the text itself: the story has the quality of a quaint fairytale more than that of a legend or an epic. Instrumental to this effect is the use of language. Language in The Hobbit is lighter and more buoyant than its sequel in which one assumes Tolkien could afford the luxury to contemplate on natural geography and sombre subjects. Here, perhaps due to the comparative smallness of events - though not inconsequential - Tolkien's treatment of his subject matter is sprightly and humorous, giving the story an air of an adventurous fairytale. The fate of the world is not contingent upon Bilbo and the dwarves, although they do temporarily defeat evil in the finale. The company that set out from Bag End had wealth in their mind, treasures of precious jewels and gold and mithril. A fairytale would not do to talk about catastrophes such as the end of the world or the ultimate defeat of evil through a slow and torturous path to Mordor. The Hobbit reflects optimism and lacks an inner darkness and grimness that is integral to the plot of Lord of the Rings.

How is this optimism manifested? Through humour. The dwarves suffer in the hands of the goblins but their suffering is far from agonizing, and is treated comically: "...[A]nd more than one of the dwarves were already yammering and bleating like anything, when they stumbled into a big cavern". When the dwarves' ponies are eaten by the goblins, the murderous act is described with a passing touch of humour. Thorin and the Great Goblin have time, even, to engage in civil conversation. The villains here are comic trolls and stumbling goblins rather than Orcs, and Sauron is simply a distant "Necromancer". Adventures and events that had the likelihood of putting a permanent stop to their quest are solved by the very stuff fairytales are made of: wit and magic.

Tolkien's characterization of dwarves is not forgiving. They are depicted as money-hoarding, ungrateful, loud, foolish and greedy people (if not for Gimli, I would've taken an instant dislike towards them). "...dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much". They set out to recover treasures stolen from their families, now hidden in the Lonely Mountains, and guarded by one terrorizing and dangerous Smaug. Occasionally they land into trouble with elves, goblins and a host of carnivorous spides, and who else but Bilbo Baggins, who was employed in their service only as a burglar, fishes them out. When the dwarves finally reach the goal of their quest, again it is Bilbo who is sent to the task of exploring the dark cave and has to parley with a dragon who is not even his enemy!

Yet, it is through such encounters that the titular hobbit evolves from timid and hesitant to the brave leader - and occasional saviour - of the group. Bilbo defeats the many masks of death and battles with its manifestations to emerge alive though not unchanged. Therein lies the structural importance of the text's subtitle. Between 'there' and 'back again' is a world of change, a character's growth and transformation; a three-foot tall Bilbo Baggins' heroic adventure that has altered the course of Middle Earth's history.

And even if Bilbo is not tempted by Smaug's treasure under the mountain, although it is he who has recovered the stolen gold, it does not mean that he remains untempted by power and wealth. Perhaps it is poetic irony that while Bilbo gives away the Arkenstone jewel in The Hobbit, we learn in its sequel of the devastating effects that a simple ring has on him. It seems what was unnamed and unknown had a more malignant and poisonous ramification on the little hobbit than all the treasures had on the dwarves.

Passion for perversion: Sasayaki / Moonlight Whispers (1999)

My first impression of Akihiko Shiota's Moonlight Whispers was that it was going to be a sweet, coming-of-age love story between two high school friends. (But of course, I wouldn't take the time to write this if it were simply that.) Their romance quickly turns sour once the female lead, Satsuki, played by Tsugami, opens a drawer in Hidaka's (Kenji Mizuhashi) room to discover it filled with personal paraphernalia belonging to herself: soiled underwear, discarded tissue paper, socks and a tape recording of her taking a piss. Shocked, she calls him a 'hentai' (i.e. pervert) and calls it quits.


We quickly realize that timid Hidaka is happier loving her from afar, although he is still far from happy and repeatedly confuses love, worship and suffering. At one point, he quietly confesses to her, "I am your dog" - and Satsuki takes up the challenge of being his master. Thus begins an intensily sadomasochistic and erotic relationship between the two exlovers. Hidaka is motivated the pleasure he derives from simply being near her while Satsuki is spurned on by her shock at discovering his true nature.

She begins subjecting him to intense emotional and physical torture, including kicking his genitals repeatedly, forcing him to watch her making love to another man and lick her dirty feet and sweat, and crushing his fingers under her heeled shoes. She finally makes a test of his love with his life. Satsuki realizes that she enjoys the power she has over his psyche and behaviour even if it means exercising that power to the point of hurting everyone around her. As much as Satsuki brands Hidaka a pervert, she, too, is one insofar as we consider her unablility to stop her participation in his perversity. In fact, she propels it to greater heights by giving him mini exercises in sadomasochism and in doing so encourages his idolatry for her.

On the whole, the film is mostly quiet. Kenji Mizuhashi and Tsugami deliver stunning performances but manage to do this, somehow, without raising their voices. The surface is hushed and never betrays the deep intensity of emotions that lies frothing just beyond the periphery of dialogue. The final scene is a testimony to the ambiguity of tension. As she sits on an open field, Hidaka limps over in crutches and a broken leg to deliver her requested can of ginger ale (and she flippantly rejects it for the second time). Touching, poignant and deeply aware of the many contradictions that riddle the human condition, these are the films cinema is made for.

Naked Lunch (1991)

"Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to".

A few days ago, I landed a copy of The Criterion Collection edition of David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. I've been an admirer of the director since his work on eXistenZ and The Fly. He is my other Terry Gilliam. Great concepts, great execution and lots of visual flair. As for William Burroughs, I've tried (unsuccessfully) many times to get a copy of The Naked Lunch. For four years, I looked and looked. The library of the university I used to go to has a most impressive collection of fiction. The book is listed in the library catalogue but for some reason, it has mysteriously disappeared from the shelves. I did, however, find Junky, and ever since developed an appreciation for drug-themed literature.

Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (1991) is a metaphoric comment on the mysterious writing experience. William Lee (Peter Weller) is an ex-junkie who has come clean and found his profession as a bug exterminator. That is, only until he sees his wife, Joan (Judy Davis), shooting up a syringe full of bug powder or pyrethrum. "A Kafka high", she tells him, "You feel like a bug". It is safe to say that after this scene, only the third in the film, nothing on screen and in Cronenberg's world can be considered as happening in "reality" any longer. The disjuncture is faintly obvious at first. At the police station, for example, where Bill is brought after being arrested for possession of narcotics, we meet the first product of his imagination. It is a gigantic talking bug with a pouty pink anus for a mouth and the impossibility of its existence allows us to dismiss it as a hallucination.

But is it? Reality rapidly spirals out of control once the Interzone, Inc. conspiracy is unveiled. Bill is convinced that his wife is an agent sent to kill him and murders her in a William Tell routine (i.e, a whisky glass on her head, a pistol in his hand, shot fired, glass unbroken). Due to overwhelming guilt, he falls back into his old habit and into an arabesque world from which he emerges only once, when his friends discover him wondering in the streets with a pillowcase full of a candy shop of drugs.

I mentioned earlier that this is a film involved with the writing experience. In this one moment of semi-sobriety, Bill is read a few lines of a novel he has apparently been writing in his apartment throughout his drug-induced hallucinations. It is significant that Bill fails to recognize the words as his own. This raises some important questions about the issue of ownership in relation to content. In his case, writing under the influence made him forget what he was doing, his writing was not a conscious act even though it has the clarity and linearity of a conscious act. Who owns it? Bill, of course, disclaims ownership of this New Jersey story. His brain is fried and his wires are reconfigured into Interzonal laws.

On one hand is a beautiful piece of writing and on the other, the weak, addicted mind that produced it. The dichotomy between the two is such a sublime comment on literature and their authors. Writing is assumed to be a noble profession because it is judged by its output (Ulysses, Homer, The Divine Comedy). Literature is instrumental in creating and recording culture and history. It is assumed that the mind that writes it, that gives birth to it, is equally as noble and refined. Yet Cronenberg's adaptation shows us another truth: that it is capable of living in and thinking of the greatest filth as well, that it can be a polluted gutter teeming with all variety of insects.

The bug references are not only a symbol of mental decay and degredation, they are also one of the many elements in the film that are a tribute to Kafka. After shooting a load of insecticide into her breast, Joan tells her husband that it's "a Kafka high. You feel like a bug", a clear reference to The Metamorphosis where Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a gigantic insect. There are a plentitude of Kafkaesque sequences as well. Bill is arrested for a crime but when he escapes the prison, no one makes any inquiries into his disappearance. Moreover, we are never told exactly why he was arrested and there are no official proceedings. Additionally, if we accept his murder of Joan as a real event, which it likely was because there was a witness, and not another product of his hallucinatory voyages into the unknown recesses of his mind, then the fact that we do not see any lawful consequences is extremely bizzare. This is the complete opposite of Kafka's approach although it has a similar disconcerting effect on the audience/reader. Kafka's trick is to produce dire consequences but he always remains elusive on the cause. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is transformed into a bug but we never know why. In The Trial, Josef K. is hunted and killed for an unexplained crime that he did not commit. In The Castle, the main protagonist never reaches the castle and dies trying to manoeuver through bureaucratic labyrinths. In Cronenberg's universe, a law-transgressive crime has been committed but it has no lawful consequence. We know Bill has not been caught because the Interzone still exists, its story is ongoing.

The film is packed within three bubbles. In the inner bubble are the pyrethrum-inspired visions of giant centipedes and bugs, squirting typewriters, doppelgangers, homosexuals, uninhibited sexual activity, a conspiracy about an illegal drug market and Bill's tangled involvement in this outlandish, alien world. The middle bubble is more subtle, characterized by the sort of reality one observes of in the first five scenes. Of this world, of New York City but with pink elephants and flying pigs. In the outermost layer is a world that runs on a complete breakdown of the laws of cause and effect. Even outside the drug experience, Cronenberg's world spins on some disconcerting, disorienting point of reference which is always unrecognizable, unseeable.

Currently the deep blue skies soar above me and the winter weather chills my bones, local cuisines vary at a rate of about 5 times a month, once in a while my back hurts because my position is right-angled in a back corner of a car that has achieved a mileage of at least 4000km; currently I have been trying to dodge near-fatal accidents that, mostly, appear to have been directly related to the lack of knowledge about local road rules and signs and, in what is starting to become a large handicap, speaking only English. Nevertheless, the general color of things and that peculiar shade of air manage to be different in almost every country and community so that a brick building in Rotterdam and a brick building in Italy look entirely, worldly different from each other. As such, whenever I predict that my eyes shall tire soon, there will be at least a few days of recuperation, rest and privacy, then, finally, I will not be tempted to roam the area in ever-expanding circles that would gradually lead me out, camera in hand, further and further away from the accommodation, and at such an opportune and blessed moment, I will sit and attempt the tedious task of sorting through mail. And after that, if there is some time, compose a short note on all literary exploits I have so far had.

And so - In Greece, I discovered Mick Jackson in a beautiful wooden home walled with rows and rows of science fiction books, bought mostly at sales and second-hand shops and filled with the long, aged aura of history. In a Zurich squat, I found in a toilet on the third floor, above the soup kitchen, a five-page zine in which was an exposition written by a graphic designer sick of bureaucracy and eager to begin a project that avoids, for once, the itchy tape of rules and law and relies, instead, on initiative and trust. (It worked.)  In Bulgaria, I finally found De Profundis by Oscar Wilde, complete with an introduction; I no longer need to stare at a computer screen if and when I am in the mood for a most bitter, reproachful and yet elegant letter. My delight exceeded me because it was a text that I had always wanted to read and own in a book and to celebrate, we went to the Falafel King. In Belluno, in a bed-and-breakfast tucked away on one of the many rolling green hills of northern Italy, I found a bookshelf in the room under the window, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. In Belgium, I was introduced for the first time to one of the most enigmatic figures in history I have ever come across - Athanasus Kircher. In Vienna, I scoured the shops in the streets surrounding a university, got lost and took the wrong turn enough times to allow the sun to set so that when I finally found a bookshop, I was happy to buy even a text printed for students by the university press. City of Glass by Paul Auster, a small red book that fit easily into whatever little space I had on my backpack, was my happy companion in train rides across Holland and Germany (whenever I was not sleeping or admiring the view with an envious eye). Right now, in Czech, I have discovered a wonderful gem - The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl. I am only at the third chapter but I need to race back and start reading it!

Re-reading "Wuthering Heights"

A week or so ago, I sickened of purchasing new books long enough for me to pick up Wuthering Heights again, after two years of having first read it. As the first time, I was blown away by Emily Bronte's lyrical style and her exquisite eye for detail. The whispering, mourning moors beyond the Heights, the fiercely defiant Joseph, who makes for such an odd servant, and the destructive and consuming love between a savage Heathcliff and a selfish Catherine - yes, they all blew me away in equal proportions. Since I was reading it for a class in Romantic Literature, I had little leisure to pursue my own meandering thoughts. (Which reminds me how the phrase "unreliable narrator", in my four years' worth of lit tutorials, came up more times than I cared to count (and with almost the same frequency as "postmodernism"). It seems to be an obsession with undergraduates to keep pointing out that narrators are unreliable (and how almost everything can be explained away because it is postmodern). Unfortunately, few showed how and why.)

English novels of the 18th and 19th century had a tendency to contain frame narratives. Frankenstein is a popular example; each of its multiple narratives delving deeper and deeper into the monster's story. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine are other examples. The purpose of a story-within-a-story technique is to offer multiple perspectives on an event, opening up the possibility of multiple meanings within and without the scope of a text. It is a conscious effort to call attention to the fact that what is being told is a story, and this self-consciousness raises questions about how narratives tell themselves. One of the interesting things I found about using the frame conceit is that while it distances the reader from the space, time and locale of the story, it inevitably draws him deeper into the narrator's psyche. In other words, a certain sense of extreme subjectivity is heightened and an odd tango between distance and nearness is negotiated. In the case of Wuthering Heights, such a dramatic degree of subjectivity is achieved that meaning-making is problematized. More on this later.

The novel begins with Lockwood's introduction to the Heights but it is Ellen (Nelly) Dean's narrative that takes up a large chunk of the text. Her voice is that of the novel's and we, the readers, are in Lockwood's position, locked into the role of listeners. Just as Lockwood is paralysed as Nelly's tale unfolds, asking no questions and making no interruptions - notice it is always she who signals the end of an episode, while he grudgingly obliges - so we, the readers, are seated silently listening.

Nelly Dean's narrative takes on the quality of the extremely subjective: her defends and excuses are woven into the fabric of her narrative. Lockwood does not question it since it is the only account he has. The reader, fortunately less passive than Lockwood, has a duty to churn through this mismash of events/opinions/justifications/prejudices, etc and filter out as close a representation of events-as-they-occured. Of course, we remember Saleem Sinai saying memory has its own truth and realize that any attempt to uncover some sort of objective reality quite impossible. Bronte, it seems, comments on the impossibility of accurate representation, much less on one true representation.

Ellen's power over the narrative as well as the mute Lockwood-as-reader places her in an extremely advantageous and powerful position and I think she is aware of this. Many times in the text, her voice rises with indignation at the accusations levelled against her, yet one gets the sense that she cannot disguise the pleasure in her voice at being the only person coherent and "objective" enough to pass on the tale. I think she is also pleased at being given the opportunity to validate her actions that had gotten her into trouble with Edgar Linton just before Catherine's second illness; plus it gives her a reason to go on a power trip by affording her a role and purpose greater than that of mere maid - she is now the beholder and dispenser of knowledge.

In contrast to Ellen's masculinity is a feminized Mr. Lockwood. First overcome by the daunting and dramatic appearance of Wuthering Heights, he is treated with less cordiality than expected from his host; he is scolded and dismissed by Heathcliff's servant, Joseph, then attacked by a pack of dogs, and, to cap it off, is afflicted for a few weeks by an illness. When we observe his apparent inability to comprehend the strange set of rules governing Wuthering Heights, he is reduced to a comical position. His earnest attempts to observe social decorum are utter failures in a house where such values are meaningless. This misplaced propriety gives us a sense of Lockwood-as-female at his first ball in proper society, introduced to gentry and stumbling quite successfully all over the place. Pitiful, yes but funny also.

In subtle ways, Nelly Dean admits to being an untrustworthy servant to her master and mistress, which foreshadows her incredible unreliability as a narrator too. "I remembered Mr. Edgar's stern rebuke of my carrying tales; and I tried to smooth away all disquietude on the subject, by affirming, with frequent iteration, that that betrayal of trust, if it merited so harsh an appellation, should be the last." A bit of context is necessary: the incident in question here is regarding Heathcliff's visit to Thrushcross Grange and the fight it provoked between Linton and Heathcliff. Ellen had a significant role to play in the confrontation by "carrying tales" to Linton, although she wasn't exactly lying but she wasn't minding her business either. She then failed to inform Linton of Catherine's three-day fast/starvation because she felt Mrs. Linton was putting on airs (there is sufficient evidence to indicate this but let us not forget she also dies a short while later), but Nelly's self-granted independence of action maximized the potential disaster the situation had to offer. On day three, when she half-truthfully tells Catherine that Mr. Edgar did not inquire about her absence about the house because he had been reading his books all along, she precipitates an illness that sends Catherine Linton to her grave. Nelly's role and actions, at this point, takes on shades of cunning and manipulation.

Although it is a rather unkind reading, I think there is a case to be made of Ellen Dean's many attempts to usurp power that is otherwise denied to her in the position of maid. These, of course, are well-justified and covered up in her narrative to Lockwood; she appears only as one most concerned of everyone else's wellfare. Yet it is not entirely fair to say Nelly is only a power-hungry, devious, Machiavellian old maid although that would fall very nicely under a Gothic reading. It could entirely be possible that she unconsciously imbibes these traits under the guise of a kind, well-meaning caretaker. She has, after all, seen to the care of Heathcliff, Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw since their birth, as well as their children. More than once, she helped Heathcliff escape from Hindley's murderous and envious grasp. Moreover, that Catherine Earnshaw is a selfish woman was mentioned by Heathcliff, too, which makes Nelly's reaction to her mistress's fast not unusual. And if we can believe her on these accounts, we can also believe that her narrative is an intensely subjective one, colored by her own insecurities and neuroses.

Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985)

The hiatus was not completely unwarranted; it is (fingers crossed) my last semester at university and loose ends galore. Thankfully, the mad rush for essay deadlines, short assignments and presentations officially saw its end a little over a few hours ago. Fueled by a can of well deserved beer, I wax lyrical about a brilliant film I've just only seen: Brazil.

When asked 'What is Brazil?', Tom Stoppard, one of its writers, said it was about "the myth of the free man in an unfree society". Terry Gilliam said it was more than anything about "the impossibility of escaping from reality". Deeply allegorical and brilliantly told, Brazil (1985) is a story about a nightmarish, dystopian past/present/(imagined) "future" where Franz Kafka's The Trial meets David Lynch's Dune (1984) or, more famously, George Orwell's 1984 meets A Clockwork Orange. At the crux of the matter is a man, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), whose adventures in an unknown place and an unknown time ("Somewhere in the 20th Century", is all we are told) reveal the workings of a society unnaturally dependent on redundant technology and bureaucratic red tapes and headed by an absurd government that describes a 13-year-old campaign against terrorism as a "sporting game" and flippantly dismisses terrorist bombings as "bad sportsmanship". Nightmarish yet impressive images - think Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (a good write-up about dystopian cities in film here), only all the dirt and grime in Scott's urban city is hidden underneath a clean, polished surface in Gilliam's; a verisimilitude a truth and the world of filth it hides.

The perfect symmetry is part of why this movie works so well: the film opens with the subtitle "Somewhere in the 20th Century" and ends with "Someday soon...". Within this arched perimeter, confusion emerges. For several reasons, it becomes impossible to differentiate between Brazil-location and Brazil-time, leaving us with little or no frame of reference. Of course, we know it is somewhere in the 20th century, but when exactly? There seems to be a conflation of past and "future". The architectural look of the film is simultaneously 80's noir and futuristic mixed with the desperation for bigger-and-better associated with an insecure past. Technology is messy, infantile and ineffective but also wildly extravagant, even dramatic. Massive buildings, commanding architecture and long, imposing corridors house malfunctioning lifts and tiny cubicles separated by thin walls (the Ministry of Information Retrieval). Architecture evokes neither past nor present. Because the world looks as though the entire 20th century were condensed into a single, continuous moment, a new sort of aesthetics is created by the superimposition of one atop the other making it simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. (As a side note, I think a Freudian reading with regards to his ideas in 'The Uncanny' might make an interesting analysis of Gilliam's surreal artistic vision in this film.)

Technology in Brazil doesn't appear to move in a logical forward-looking direction; its application is haphazard but that hardly bothers anyone. And even if they realize it, no one says anything. The microcosmic world of the film holds a mirror up to the macrocosm of thiz world - incidentally, the 'real' reality - and reminds us of its inherent existential crisis, as if saying, "Now, so what?" Now that we've got bazookas and batteries and bombs that go BOOM, which are some indications of progress - what's next? Brazil's answer to this is 'more'. Pessimistic modernity does not stop to reflect and ruminate upon its progress or think of its end. Like Sisyphus, we push that rock of an idea up the hill, down, and back up again. In an effort to keep moving, concepts like 'progression', 'regression', 'restrategize' or 'Plan B' lose meaning. The end is no longer a point in the horizon: the purpose, it seems, is to keep chugging on - it is useless to think whether one is heading forward or backward or for what purpose as long as there is constant movement towards an idea of progress, and, by extension, an idea of a "future". Perhaps it is because of this self-reflexive quality that in the end, due to the the indistinguishable past-future-present conflation, that "Somewhere" becomes "Everywhere" and "Someday soon" becomes "never". An ominous warning? Gilliam did say Brazil was his "message in a bottle" to America.

Occupying a position irreconcilable with the philosophy of corporate fascism, Sam Lowry's dreams take him far above and away from endless paper trails into the clouds. Totalitarianism, terrorists and death on one hand, fantasy, love and hope on the other. I thought it pertinent that Gilliam chose to employ elements of fantasy in Lowry's dream sequences to forward the film's inescapable critique of modernity. It is significant and ironic in equal parts given that it is within the innerspace of fantasy that places very opposite from reality can be reached and yet, with regard to Brazil, it is also within the realm of fantasy that fantasy is thwarted and reality (or modernity) re-exerted.

Sam Lowry is a deeply unhappy man who escapes from his garish reality into a world of flight where he is a winged hero flying towards a blond haired angelic heroine. His dreams are simple wish fulfillments, directly reflecting his desire to break free from the tiresome and tedious world he comes from. His dreams are in open, free environments but soon enough become virtually indistinguishable from his waking reality where everything is a nightmare. In one scene, a ringing sound in his dream which gradually increases in frequency turns out to be someone's phone call from work informing him that he is late. Reality and fantasy, in Brazil - or at least in Lowry's psychology - feed off of each other, mutually informing and influencing the other's "reality". The system - that is, the bureaucracy - extends its omnipresence into every aspect of life. Gilliam's mise-en-scene is quite brilliant at communicating volumes of information within a single frame: next to the telephone is an oversized, highly complicated alarm clock with wires running this way and that, looking quite important and large - incidentally, it failed to work.

To escape reality and the grinding down of oppressive, official forces taking the form of evil creatures such as the Steel Samurai (fully comprised of computer parts), Lowry dreamily takes flight from technology into the arms of his lady love. But these flights are, in reality (if you'd pardon the pun), doomed. A condition that Brazil analyzes through architecture - and by extension, technology - as a form of oppressive authority is that of imprisonment and entrapment. The film is saturated with references to this but it is particularly interesting that they infiltrate the realm of fantasy as well. Lowry's dreams are constantly interrupted by manifestations of malevolent, imposing architecture. In one dream, he is cut off from Jill by a cluster of brick monoliths that appear to emerge out of the ground. In another, Jill is trapped in a cage and pulled though a dark city. As soon as Sam remembers his heroic duty, a brick figure rises out of the ground and grabs him around the ankles. If I were to go on a psychoanalytic bend here, I'd think this becomes especially relevant when we remember Sam's character in his waking life is a rather hesitant, nervous sort who wins Jill over much later and only after he is forced to question and prioritize what he values most. That his attempts to assert his self, even his masculinity, are thwarted by that very thing that keeps him from Jill in reality is symbolic not only of an oppressive authority but the innate inability to break the bonds of the mundane and transcend to a loftier, freer existence.

This is the no-escape clause that Gilliam and Stoppard talked about, that maddening march of modernity to nowhere, ending no time soon. It is an existential cry, a chillingly accurate reflection of the absurd modern obsession with technology, an allegorical tale, a nightmare, a truth in genius proportions and a movie I am going to watch again after I fetch the other can of beer sitting in the fridge.