A Dystopian Comedy Uncomfortably Reflects Our Age

While our elected representatives are locked in mortal combat over the future of the nation’s health, the federal government’s shut-down but the NSA, still fully funded, continues whatever cartoonish villainy it sees fit. The editor of the UK’s Guardian Newspaper summed it up this week, “Orwell could never have imagined anything as complete as this.”

Against this backdrop, Popolo in Bellows Falls continues its monthly movie series with the dark comedy, Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, and Robert Deniro.

Originally slated for an auspicious release in 1984, Brazil is set in a bleak and bewildering future of blundering Big Brother surveillance, mind-bendingly backward technology, and ubiquitous but somehow ignorable terrorism. Director Gilliam’s stylistic history with Monty Python keeps the absurdity center stage while blending the dystopian motifs of Orwell, Huxley, and even Kafka into a dream of personal freedom amid the confusing maze of the modern state.

Sam Lowry, a civil servant in a monolithic, gray-suited bureaucracy gets caught up in the tyrannical exploits of the system when an equipment failure in the Department of Information Retrieval results in the death of an innocent man. Meanwhile, Lowry’s dream-life finds him bewinged and besotted with a beautiful girl (Greist) whom he actually meets in real life. As it turns out, she’s wrapped up with a terrorist ring and wants nothing to do with poor mister Lowry. The hapless protagonist is periodically rescued by Harry Tuttle, a rogue ninja repairman (Deniro), who keeps the idea of heroism alive while outsmarting the nightmarish police state. “Listen, kid,” Tuttle confides, “We’re all in this together.”

The director’s efforts to realize this unprecedented visual spectacle are legendary. Finally, after a protracted fight with the studio system, Brazil was released in 1985, critics heralded it as perhaps the finest film of the decade. Nominated for two Academy Awards, Brazil garnered interesting if mixed accolades, among them The New York Times that said, “Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, a jaunty, wittily-observed vision of an extremely bleak future, is a superb example of the power of comedy to underscore serious ideas, even solemn ones.”

The film series at Popolo, shown on an eight-foot screen that descends behind the bar, has been very successful, with packed houses for movies like Thelma and Louise, Big Night, and Popolo’s Clint Eastwood Spaghetti and Westerns costumed events. As with all the films in its series, Popolo serves a related prix fixe menu which, in this case is a four-course offering of Brazilian specialties including a tropical black bean sopa, spicy paelha, stuffed delicata squash, traditional Brazilian grilled meats, and a dessert of fried bananas and mango cream. There are selections for the vegetarian observers of dark comedy, as well. We’re all in this together. The evening wouldn’t be the same without a signature capirinha cocktail. On movie nights, Popolo’s normal menu is served in the lobby dining room only.

Tickets for dinner and Brazil are $25 including the film and the four-course dinner but are exclusive of drinks, tax, and gratuity.You can purchase tickets at the restaurant or online at www.popolomeanspeople.com For more information, contact Popolo 802.460.7676