Comparing Gilliam's Brazil and. Radford's 1984 adaptation. While researching a book about the making of and the feud surrounding the American release of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, author Jack Mathews read virtually every review of the film printed in the United States and found that very few failed to refer to the film as "futuristic" or "Orwellian". “The comparisons are understandable, even if they are inaccurate,” Mathews says. "There is no futuristic element in Brazil. The story is Orwellian, in the sense that it takes place in a totalitarian state where individuality is stifled by forced conformity. But where George Orwell... envisaged a future Ruled by fascism and technology, Gilliam satirized the bureaucratic and largely dysfunctional industrial world that had driven him mad all his life” (Mathews). At first glance, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, made in 1985, closely resembles Michael Radford's 1984 film version of George Orwell, made in 1984, in its setting and story. However, upon closer examination of the two films, there are differences in style and tone that set them apart from each other. 1984 is dark and gloomy from start to finish while Brazil, while still gloomy, has a much lighter atmosphere. The love stories featured in both films are undeniably similar and make the plots closer to each other, but that is the only strong connection they share, as the differences in tone push the films apart from each other. of others. Due to its dark humor, Brazil is a satire of the very society in which the story takes place, while 1984, while also a satire, lacks any humor and is instead a horror story about a society which could await humanity. opening scene, Terry Gilliam's Brazil seems rather jovial. A shot in which the camera hovers in the sky, passing in and out of clouds, starts the film while the song "Brazil", which gives the film its name, fills the soundtrack. Titles begin to appear on the hovering plane. The titles read “Somewhere in the 20th Century,” informing the audience of the time period, but also confusing them. The world in which the main character of the film evolves is a bleak, dystopian and retro-futuristic metropolis, far from anything we have seen this century. In this world, no one is protected from the government; individuals are executed following administrative errors. Compensation for these wrongful deaths is a simple reimbursement check.