![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Sad Endings Aren't So Bad After All
The following will contain spoilers for the film "Brazil". If you have not seen the film, and wish for it to remain a surprise, do not read any further.
I saw Terry Gilliam's classic film "Brazil" a few weeks ago. After first watching it, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. I love sci-fi, and Gilliam certainly created an imaginative world. Well, that's one word for it. But I also found the film to be confusing. At times it was also boring. But most of all, it was sad. And the ending, well, if that doesn't crush your spirit nothing will. So I left that movie declaring I hated it and would never ever watch it again.
Yet, a month later, I'm still thinking about it.
The film is all about the evils of bureaucracy, and how it can utterly fail us if it grows too large. There are no bad guys in the film. Nobody acts out of evil. But terrible things happen because people refuse to act against the system. At the end of the film, our Protagonist, Sam Lowry, goes insane after being arrested and learning that the woman he has been trying to save, the woman that he loves, has been killed by the police while resisting arrest. A member of the system himself, Lowry has been pleading for help from his friends and colleagues to save this innocent woman from being wrongfully imprisoned, which will surely result in her execution. He knows that the bureaucracy doesn't work, and because of its failure, innocent people die. He has never acted against it until now, because of this woman, Jill Layton.
His friends and colleagues, however, are stuck in the system and are used to the system. In face, one of his best friends, Jack Lint, is an interrogator, and is furious with Lowry at the end of the film because he himself is assigned to interrogate Lowry. Before Lint can even get started on torturing Lowry, however, Lowry goes insane and the movie ends, with Lint walking away dismayed that Lowry would throw away his career. Sam Lowry's quest has failed. Jill Layton is dead, Lowry is off to the insane asylum, and Jack Lint will presumably return to his normal life unchanged.
So one can naturally see why I was frustrated at the end of the film. Everything Lowry tried to accomplish failed miserably, and doing the right thing has doomed him. It's not very uplifting, and it first seems to be a waste of 2 hours. But when I thought about it some more, I realized that the moral of the story is not about Sam Lowry. It's about Jack Lint. There are multiple times in the film Lint could have helped Lowry, but he fails to rise to the occasion.
The point of this film is not to tell people that rebelling against evil will ultimately end in failure. Rather, it is a reminder that one cannot do it alone. Everybody needs to rise up and fight what is wrong. We cannot simply be passive and wait for a heroic few to save us all. Lowry fails because his receives too little help. If he were to receive assistance from his colleagues, both he and Jill Layton could easily escape the system and live "happily ever after."
One can easily compare this to Nazi Germany. During Hitler's time as Chancellor, there was a small group of dissenters who plotted to have him killed. This group included Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This group acted out of various motives. Some wanted to save Germany from a foolish war, others wanted to save the Jews from Hitler's cruelty. This group failed, however, to kill Hitler. And most of them, Bonhoeffer included, were arrested and killed by the Nazis. They failed at both saving Germany from destruction and preventing the Holocaust. This was through no fault of their own. Rather, the blame falls squarely on the German people who remained quiet and obediently did as they were told. If they had acted out and fought against the system, millions of lives could have been saved.
And this is the power of a sad ending. If Brazil were to contain the typical happy ending, with Sam and Jill escaping to a free paradise, the audience would receive a feeling of resolution. There is little will to change anything, because everything worked out and the protagonist is happy. With a sad ending, however, the audience is troubled. Things aren't as they should be or how they expected it to be, and that does not feel right. The audience feels a sense of uneasiness, and thus they might gain the will to act out and try to change things. One hopes the audience realizes they must ensure that Sam and Jill's fate never occurs.
"Brazil" is not a fun movie. It's not a film you watch with friends when you want to relax. It's a thinking film, and one that I never will see again. But I don't say that with disdain anymore. Instead, I don't need to see it again. "Brazil", and its tragic ending, will stay with me forever.
I saw Terry Gilliam's classic film "Brazil" a few weeks ago. After first watching it, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. I love sci-fi, and Gilliam certainly created an imaginative world. Well, that's one word for it. But I also found the film to be confusing. At times it was also boring. But most of all, it was sad. And the ending, well, if that doesn't crush your spirit nothing will. So I left that movie declaring I hated it and would never ever watch it again.
Yet, a month later, I'm still thinking about it.
The film is all about the evils of bureaucracy, and how it can utterly fail us if it grows too large. There are no bad guys in the film. Nobody acts out of evil. But terrible things happen because people refuse to act against the system. At the end of the film, our Protagonist, Sam Lowry, goes insane after being arrested and learning that the woman he has been trying to save, the woman that he loves, has been killed by the police while resisting arrest. A member of the system himself, Lowry has been pleading for help from his friends and colleagues to save this innocent woman from being wrongfully imprisoned, which will surely result in her execution. He knows that the bureaucracy doesn't work, and because of its failure, innocent people die. He has never acted against it until now, because of this woman, Jill Layton.
His friends and colleagues, however, are stuck in the system and are used to the system. In face, one of his best friends, Jack Lint, is an interrogator, and is furious with Lowry at the end of the film because he himself is assigned to interrogate Lowry. Before Lint can even get started on torturing Lowry, however, Lowry goes insane and the movie ends, with Lint walking away dismayed that Lowry would throw away his career. Sam Lowry's quest has failed. Jill Layton is dead, Lowry is off to the insane asylum, and Jack Lint will presumably return to his normal life unchanged.
So one can naturally see why I was frustrated at the end of the film. Everything Lowry tried to accomplish failed miserably, and doing the right thing has doomed him. It's not very uplifting, and it first seems to be a waste of 2 hours. But when I thought about it some more, I realized that the moral of the story is not about Sam Lowry. It's about Jack Lint. There are multiple times in the film Lint could have helped Lowry, but he fails to rise to the occasion.
The point of this film is not to tell people that rebelling against evil will ultimately end in failure. Rather, it is a reminder that one cannot do it alone. Everybody needs to rise up and fight what is wrong. We cannot simply be passive and wait for a heroic few to save us all. Lowry fails because his receives too little help. If he were to receive assistance from his colleagues, both he and Jill Layton could easily escape the system and live "happily ever after."
One can easily compare this to Nazi Germany. During Hitler's time as Chancellor, there was a small group of dissenters who plotted to have him killed. This group included Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This group acted out of various motives. Some wanted to save Germany from a foolish war, others wanted to save the Jews from Hitler's cruelty. This group failed, however, to kill Hitler. And most of them, Bonhoeffer included, were arrested and killed by the Nazis. They failed at both saving Germany from destruction and preventing the Holocaust. This was through no fault of their own. Rather, the blame falls squarely on the German people who remained quiet and obediently did as they were told. If they had acted out and fought against the system, millions of lives could have been saved.
And this is the power of a sad ending. If Brazil were to contain the typical happy ending, with Sam and Jill escaping to a free paradise, the audience would receive a feeling of resolution. There is little will to change anything, because everything worked out and the protagonist is happy. With a sad ending, however, the audience is troubled. Things aren't as they should be or how they expected it to be, and that does not feel right. The audience feels a sense of uneasiness, and thus they might gain the will to act out and try to change things. One hopes the audience realizes they must ensure that Sam and Jill's fate never occurs.
"Brazil" is not a fun movie. It's not a film you watch with friends when you want to relax. It's a thinking film, and one that I never will see again. But I don't say that with disdain anymore. Instead, I don't need to see it again. "Brazil", and its tragic ending, will stay with me forever.
