How Brazil dashes the hopes for a luxury, leisure-filled future communism

My forthcoming book discusses the dominance of dystopian visions of the future, which is hardly surprising given the multiple, overlapping environmental, economic, and political crises we face. In the book, I use nine classic sci-fi movies to discuss various aspects of the coming dystopia. One of them is Brazil (1985).

If you’ve seen it, it’s impossible to think about the film without its theme song entering your head. But Brazil doesn’t take place there. Rather, it’s named after its recurring theme Aquarela do Brasil (Watercolor of Brazil), written by Ary Barroso and known as just ‘Brazil’ to Western audiences. But while its use seems nonsensical at first, especially in a dystopian story, it makes sense the more you think about it.

Although not a hit initially, Brasil has become one of the 20 most recorded songs of all time. It’s fun, joyful, expressive, infectious, and absurd. Barroso wrote the song while he was stuck inside his house during a thunderstorm. It’s a dream of escape – one day.

Unfortunately, there will be no escape in director Terry Gilliam’s dystopian masterpiece. We’re in a run-down, polluted, consumerist, hyper-bureaucratic totalitarian future Britain (again), “Somewhere in the 20th century” we’re told by the title card. Gilliam says Brazil isn’t science fiction, more of a “documentary” or “political cartoon” of the world we already live in.

But really, its totalitarian setting and descent into darkness suggests how a system that’s supposed to provide for our wants and needs spirals out of control, how institutions become our oppressors, how we’re in collective denial about collapse, but how some people continue to dream of a more human society – one day.

In the book, I use Brazil to discuss how, despite its attractiveness, the recent resurgence of interest in left ‘accelerationism’ or automated communism – that we could use new technologies to finally realize the perfectly fair, planned economy – not only ignores the very real environmental collapse we’re heading towards, it also has worrying implications for democracy.

This is where, well before its time, Brazil depicts a society overrun by centralized bureaucracy where nothing really works as it should, but the system can never, ever admit it.

But for more on that, you’ll have to read the book.

Come With Me If You Want To Live: The Future as Foretold in Classic Sci-Fi Films, is out in November from Lexington Books. You can read more about it here.