When Terry Gilliam’s dystopian, retro-futuristic vision first came out (in 1985), I was blown away. So much so, I watched it twice in succession, in a tiny cinema in Stratford-upon-Avon that doubled as some sort of tourist attraction during the day.

As you might expect from Gilliam, the film is a visual delight.

With strong echoes of Orwell’s 1984, its quirky humour highlights, rather than softens, the darkness of an omniscient – but woefully inefficient – bureaucracy. And like 1984, Brazil was written as a satire of its own time. Anyone who has ever argued with a “computer-says-no” bureaucrat will know this world.

The hapless dreamer of a protagonist – Sam Lowry – is played by a young Jonathan Pryce, better known these days for wily, mendacious characters like Game of Thrones’ High Sparrow and Taboo’s Sir Stuart Strange or Wolf Hall’s Cardinal Wolsey.

It is strange, bleak and beautiful.

Here’s the trailer…

And here’s Gilliam talking about the film …