Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

Crazy ass movie. It's like 1984, Thomas Pynchon, and Kafka merged into one. But then what else can you say about the always inspiring Terry Gilliam? His movies are so out there but they constantly attempt to challenge social structure. Here, we have the notion of a futuristic, ultra bureaucratic society where people are lost and threatened by paperwork. The workers at the firm for the protagonist have no names but are serialized encodings for their departments. The main character's life is unambitious but he changes that when a mishap in an account causes him to investigate a scene and he meets and obsesses over a woman that he envisions from his dreams. The story's ending ends up on a sadder yet more hopeful note than 1984. The hero, strapped to a chair with his hands pierced as symbolizing his position as a Christ-like figure, gazes into his own world where he's locked away and distant. Yet his dreams cannot manifest as reality succumbs him to his final imprisonment. It's interesting to see Gilliam's vision of the future here carried out as a society which is embroiled in paperwork. Citigroup was like that where one's punishment is not getting fired, but rather filling out a million forms just to bypass several thousand other forms. The people in this world are apathetic to the dispositions of the less fortunate, instead immersed in their own selfish indulgence. For instance we see his mother and mother's friend in the gluttony of wealth, rather than spending time for the social good, conversing about trite issues that only define the meaning of their existence. The movie makes me bring up yet another god foresaken sexual harassment course i had to endear today. I coined the idea of the "semantic law." That is, how we have converted and manipulated semantics over common sense in declaring judgment on our society. I found the exercise to be one of patience because anything they showed you there was clearly a waste of time (and something I poignantly mentioned in the review section). I find it depressing that our society has allowed these technocrats to hold positions for incriminating people. Despite all the evidence of harassment this or that in the program, I found the program to be disturbingly insulting to my own senses. It was clearly geared to favor certain people such as mentioning how religious iconography in the private space would be okay as opposed to porn. My belief has always been to mind your fucking business. I never ask people to visit my spot and I don't visit their's unless invited. The other insult was how they said that a "reasonable" person could distinguish between good/bad idioms in these scenarios. These days "reasonable" lacks resonance because reason has been replaced by semantics. A person could argue shit out of their asshole and declare their feces land. But common sense has no place in the semantic world, especially lawyers, those that pervert the English language, have ruled with their scheming means. But imagine how much better we'd feel without these lawyers and bureaucrats? We all want to be like Sam from Brazil with our magic sword and slaying the evil oppressor and bringing freedom to the world. But in the end we're simply consumed by paperwork and disappear without a trace like Robert Deniro.