A bureaucrat in a future totalitarian state becomes its enemy and ultimately – its victim. [Dir: Terry Gilliam/ Jonathan Pryce, Katherine Helmond, Robert De Niro/ 131 min/ SciFi-Fantasy, Comedy/ Anti-Socialism, Government as Torturer]
It also includes elements from the present American situation: sudden, violent, BATF-style entrances into people’s homes, vast databases of information on private individuals, and a strange public tolerance for it all. Trapped in this milieu, a clerk at the Ministry of Information leads a dreary life in a dead-end job. He experiences happiness only in his dreams.
Then one day his life changes completely. It seems an innocent man was arrested and tortured to death due to a bureaucratic foul-up, and worse, the man’s family was overcharged for the torture!
Yes, the state here charges for its “services.” So the clerk tries to refund the man’s family for the overcharge. In the course of doing so, he meets, literally, the woman of his dreams. As it turns out, she’s an anti-state rebel on the run. He tries to help her and to be with her, but in the end they are both captured. Tortured into a catatonic state, he effectively “escapes” into his dream world.
This film is three parts 1984 and one part Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Elements of both the story and the atmosphere appear to have been inspired by 1984. However, this film is more black comedy than straight drama. It doesn’t so much dramatize the horror of totalitarianism as mock it. That makes it a bit more palatable, but the downside of the satirical approach is that it’s less effective in generating sympathy for the state’s victims. Director Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python fame, infuses this film with the Pythonesque brand of humor – dry, British, and sometimes bizarre.
Memorable music and quality special effects contribute much and there are some well-sketched minor characters, including a heroic independent repairman whom libertarians will find especially admirable (he quit working for the state monopoly, and is being hunted as an illegal free-lancer). It’s not a film to everyone’s taste, but it’s nonetheless a provocative dystopian vision.
This article was reprinted from Jon Osborne's Miss Liberty's Guide to Film and Video: Movies for the Libertarian Millenium, available in the Advocates Liberty Store.
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