Kelly Monson
10-30-08
English
In the movie Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam, a man named Sam Lowry is caught up in a surreal series of events in a dystopian world where terrorism is a mundane, everyday occurrence and society is controlled and networked by an endless flow of paperwork and documentation. In his dreams he is an angel rescuing a certain woman from a metaphorical city of intimidating, monolithic structures and hostile, mechanical beings. His apartment is infested with obligatory central heating ducts that don’t even work correctly.
The movie Repo Man, directed by Alex Cox, opens with an angry punk named Otto who lives a depressing life. He is fired from his job at a supermarket in which generic products stating “FOOD” and “BEER” on their generically blue labels are sold. His doped-out parents donated his entire college savings to a televangelist. Unexpectedly, Otto is swept into the magical world of auto repossession, which leads him to some awfully thrilling experiences involving drugs, violence and aliens.
These movies are apocalyptic in nature, which attributes to my fondness for both. Repo Man is apocalyptic because of the element of the unknown, the seemingly impossible, and the humorous trivialization of things such as death and drug-addled felons; Brazil is more obvious because it provides a setting that melodramatically falls apart as the story unfolds, and challenges the main character to survive. It’s this melodrama that intrigues me and stimulates me emotionally, in terms of what I’ve established my life philosophy to be. An important achievement of these movies, created by the absurd trivialization of normally serious instances, is that one is allowed to zoom out and look at the big picture, the director’s creation, for what it is: a beautiful, contained and presentable world, with all facets exposed. There’s an irresistibly dramatic element to the situations present in both of the aforementioned films, which seemingly have nothing in common, yet produce outrageously similar viewing experiences.
When I declare these movies “apocalyptic,” I mean it in a sense that, since the world is ending (metaphorically or literally), things must come together towards a common conclusion. Repo Man and Brazil present a world of characters and situations that, inexorably, all coincide with each other and become one massive universe. Because of this interconnection, the worlds of both are suddenly such small and comprehensible ones; it excites, mainly because the especially romanticized goal of “seeing the world” or “discovering truth” naturally fills us with a certain ecstasy. In this case, “discovering truth” or “seeing the world” is looking at perilous situations and finding them trivial. It makes one feel large.
What ends up replacing these trivialized issues are the menacing global crisis / alien invasion matters addressed in the films. Obviously this is all science fiction fantasy that could not normally be convincing in real life, but that’s exactly the point – these new things are so inconceivable, so much larger than us that they give us a rush. They give us energy. It is truly romantic and climactic in nature.
Douglas Adams, most popular for his novel Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, does this to a greater extreme. His dry, irrefutably British humor is complementary to his existential, deeply meaningful and philosophical view of his world. Adams combines a multitude of humorous, thought-provoking dimensions in which ridiculous characters experience ridiculous circumstances. Arthur Dent, whose house is being destroyed to make way for a bypass, soon realizes that his entire planet is being demolished for precisely the same reason. After watching his home planet disintegrate into nothingness, he floats aimlessly through space, until he is acquired by a spaceship that runs on improbability, on which resides his ex-girlfriend, who just so happens to be dating the two-headed president of a nearby galaxy. Incidentally, his ex-girlfriend’s pet mice actually turn out to be pan-dimensional beings.
I believe that a fundamental element to Adams’ humor is the ability to make realistically larger things seem small – a humor that is predominantly present in the aforementioned movies as well. The books Adams writes are unquestionably comical, but the element of seriousness balances it out, which creates a feeling of familiarity for something so foreign such as space/time travel. Perhaps it stimulates that part in us that wants to constantly strive for something new and challenging. The element of fear is certainly present, but there’s a reason why human beings pursue fear. We move on from the mundane commotion and graduate to the incredible. By encountering what we fear, we begin to understand.
Understanding the big picture is naturally calming. It lets us see how the intricate puzzle of our uncontrollable lives snaps together. What Adams, Gilliam and Cox all do is over-stimulate us with exciting information, cheeky gestures and motifs; they all give us something existential and powerful to turn over and over in our heads; they force us to vicariously experience the power in defying all sorts of terrifyingly ridiculous odds and being witness to the intertwining coincidences in the plot, which all turn out to be small, familiar pieces in our puzzle.
On a more personal level, there’s something about these stories that makes me feel the need to persevere and absorb experience like a sponge. Something makes me desire to infiltrate forbidden government records looking for answers, or hunt for a possessed Chevy Malibu across the States, all the while setting aside the things that no longer seem serious enough.
Something I was looking for when I decided to live in Chicago had a lot to do with finding a certain unity in chaos. To sum up my entire life as of this moment, I am one person living in a tall building in the middle of this churning turbine of a city, always busy with its familiar construction sounds and badly performed saxophone, and I am acquainted with it. The world is so small and so large simultaneously. There’s an undeniable expressionistic beauty to all this that is so difficult to explain. It’s not exactly flying through space searching for the meaning of life, but on an emotional level, it’s awfully close.
Fundamentally, Adams, Cox and Gilliam have all succeeded in providing this same unity amongst chaos. This is what is so exhilarating, and who knows why, but for some reason I hope to establish a common foundation in my life built upon the flimsiest material ever flung at me, but still architecturally very strong. This is my ideal life. It’s challenging, it’s mentally stimulating, it’s taxing and it’s the ultimate enlightenment. It’s enough to drive one to insanity.
In Brazil, Sam Lowry eventually makes it up the bureaucratic ladder in hopes of finding the woman of his dreams. Swiftly his life becomes more confusing as he sinks into an idealizing obsession. Amidst the claustrophobic workspaces, his commandeering mother (along with her ridiculous plastic surgery adventures) and his fatally malfunctioning air conditioning system, Lowry is drawn to the tempting light of lunacy. He eventually is revealed to the government to be meddling with archives and is strapped to a chair in an enormous torture chamber, left to go insane and dive into his own relentless daydreams, thus ending the movie. Sam Lowry’s life had approached its apocalypse.
Ending aside, Brazil is a very surreal, adventurous film. It’s most certainly depressing enough to not be everyone’s favorite, what with the character’s unfortunate mental plummet. The point is, though, despite the fact that our hero ended up failing miserably as a result of outside pressures, we already know what he had truly experienced, and how much, in fact, the film had allowed its character to stretch the boundaries of his world before enduring the consequences. There was a definable climax, lending proof that insanity is indeed catharsis. It is very similar in a way to the climactic (or anti-climactic) moment when Arthur Dent finally discovers the meaning of life. Hitchhiker’s Guide ends with the depressing notion that the meaning of life doesn’t make sense, but, unlike Brazil, it allows us to be led to another part of the story in order to, hopefully, make sense of it all once again. In Repo Man, Otto simply goes to Mars in a glowing green car. Sam Lowry, well, his passing is all the more miserable and yet still very similar. Ultimately the endings of all of these stories are insane on one level or another.
Insanity is not the prevalent topic. Insanity certainly has the same abstract quality, but ultimately one either goes insane from their experiences or they endure and grow. To absorb so much information at once can either lead to a universal love or stunted mental and emotional growth. It all comes down to whether or not one looks at life in exactly the right way.
This is what Adams, Cox and Gilliam have done right. They have displayed life objectively, explained through demonstration that life is indeed crazy and nonsensical, but at least we are all aware of it, and we accept life for its nonsensical qualities and often angering quirks. The amount of paperwork needed simply to live in a world that Brazil creates is astounding and maddening to the fullest extent, but presented in such a way that says, Yes. Our world is insane. We are all insane. But our awareness of it nullifies it and we are going to embrace it until we strangle it to death, and win our inner peace back.
Witnesses and characters alike are all passengers in this metaphorical glowing green car carrying us away from one ridiculous world to the next. These brilliant stories are all alike because of their ability to form unity and clarity amongst utter chaos. It clears our mind, it clears our spirit, and most importantly, it makes us feel whole. If that isn’t the meaning of life, then who knows or cares what it is?
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