Brazil

Set "somewhere in the 20th century", the retro-futuristic world of Brazil is a gritty urban hellhole patched over with cosmetic surgery and "designer ducts for your discriminating taste". The world of Brazil appears to be almost post-apocalyptic in nature. This is not due so much to the given enemies of the state (terrorists) but to a bureaucratic implosion. Brazil has become so hopelessly overcomplicated that entropy has taken over and the world appears to be on the perpetual verge of complete mechanical failure from all fronts. Layered over this is the increasingly insane amount of paperwork required to get anything done.

The story begins with Sam Lowry (Pryce), a low-level bureaucrat whose primary interests in life are his vivid dream fantasies to the tune of a 1940s big-band hit "Brazil", inadvertently getting involved with terrorist intrigue when his dream woman (Greist) turns up as the neighbor of a man ("Buttle") arrested as a terrorist instead of another man ("Tuttle") on account of a typographical error. Other people in Sam's life include the real Harry Tuttle (De Niro), the terrorist who is actually a renegade heating technician and the intended target of Buttle's arrest order; Jack (Palin), a family man and childhood friend of Sam's whose actual occupation is a government torturer; and Sam's mother (Helmond). It also features his nervous boss played by Ian Holm and a friend of his mother who undergoes a series of increasingly disturbing cosmetic surgeries.