English
A Comparison of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” to Kafka’s “The Castle”
How does one define an adult? The simplest way to answer this is to oppose the concept of adulthood to that of childhood. So an adult is someone who has stopped being a child. But, in this regard, another completely justified question arises – how does one define a child?
It seems simple enough from all standpoints: a child is an immature person, meaning he is yet to reach maturity due to his age. Therefore, the difference between a child and an adult is greatly dependent upon the definition of the concept of maturity. Maturity in turn is often defined as the ability to assume responsibility.
But what is responsibility? There are, naturally, multiple definitions of it, both from the standpoint of certain disciplines of all kinds, such as philosophy, religion, etc., and from the subjective standpoint of every individual, all of which are, at least in my opinion, equally valid. So it is perfectly acceptable for me to present my own point of view.
Two works by two very different authors on two subjects similar to the extent they may be considered one, beg discussing in view of the previous discourse.
First, movie “Brazil” by the director Terry Gilliam, who is commonly known as the director of all the Monty Python movies and for his distinctive style, which I myself consider to be claustrophobia and, to a certain degree, technophobia inducing, yet very interesting. The protagonist of the film, Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce, is a clerk at the record department of a typically oppressive government a la “1984”. The movie goes at lengths to show that Lowry is too smart for his job (specifically through scenes Pryce’s character shares with his immediate superior who often finds himself unable to cope with most of the tasks his job ensues and calls on Lowry for help, and Lowry happily obliges) but refuses to leave it, stating in conversations with his mother, who tries to get him a promotion via her friendship with the head of the “Information Retrieval” department, Helpmann, that he is happy where he is and that he has no ambitions and even dreams whatsoever, which is untrue, at least on the dream part. At night, in his slumber, he sees himself as an angel-like warrior flying across the sky towards a beautiful lady calling out his name. Through a subsequent series of events, he finds out that the lady from his dreams is very much real: her name is Jill, she works as a driver and is in danger from his employers due to a mistake in paperwork the “Information Retrieval” has made, which resulted in detention and subsequent death of her neighbor, whom she tries to get released to no avail. Lowry decides to help her, which results in him himself being marked as an enemy of the state, his capture and him, being unable to sustain being tortured by his best friend, escaping into a coma-like state during which he dreams of living outside the city with Jill (the name of the girl he dreamed of before) (“Brazil”, 1985).
In Kafka’s final book, “The Castle”, a land surveyor by the name of K. comes to a remote village run by bureaucrats from the castle to which the village belongs in the apparent absence of the count. Upon his arrival, K. learns that his services are, in fact, not needed, has never been needed and he is nothing but trouble to the villagers and the Castle itself. In order to keep him in check, two assistants from the Castle are appointed to him, whose task seems to be trying to disrupt his attempts at getting to the Castle and generally doing his job by acting in a childish and silly way, which turned out to be a direct order from the castle aimed at “lightening him up”. During his misfortunes K. learns a lot about the villagers, the Castle and the religious-like relationship these two have with each other, the Castle being regarded by the villagers as some sort of unreachable by common people place run by demigods in the form of the bureaucrats. He also takes a woman by the name of Frieda, a barmaid of the Castle Inn, an establishment regarded more reputable than the Bridge Inn where K. stays on his arrival, for a fiancée, and is given a job of a school janitor. K. never seems to abandon his hope of reaching the Castle despite everything the villagers tell him. (Kafka, 1926)
As the book was never finished, we have no way of knowing whether he succeeds or not, although it is speculated in the literary circles that he intended K. to be a Moses figure who would free the villagers from the chains of insufferable religious-like bureaucracy. We may never know. (Robertson, 2009)
The book and the film seem to share a similar subject matter and therefore these two works share some common features, but they also have their differences.
Both have to do with oppressive systems which in both cases can be regarded as the limitations imposed on protagonists from the outside, but the way the two protagonists treat these limitations are somewhat different.
In “Brazil”, the protagonist is the immediate employee of the system that imposes limitations on everyone, himself included. Since he states he has no goals, at least no realistic goals, as his dreams of being an angel and saving a beautiful girl cannot be regarded as such even by him, he seems satisfied in this position. That is true only until he meets Jill, the girl from his dreams. After that, his only goal is getting close to her, as he thinks only he is capable of helping her escape the grasp of the government hell bent on ridding the state from “terrorists” the actual presence of which is not even established throughout the whole movie (all we see are several explosions).
He does everything in his power to achieve this, goes at every possible length, including accepting the promotion which his mother had been offering him for a long time, the one he is shown to hate so much, so that he could obtain more information regarding the girl. He forsakes everything that he regarded as responsibilities before, and makes getting Jill his only responsibility. He thinks that his love for her justifies everything and therefore does everything, whether legal or not. Of course, in the context of the oppressive system presented in the movie, where morals have shifted and everything is upside down, we, looking from the outside, support his actions. But, in the end, he did forsake his responsibilities to the government in general and to his immediate superior, who also is shown to regard Lowry as his friend and to rely on him in many matters. If he acted in a similar way, but without the presence of the oppressive system, his actions would be regarded unjustified from the moral standpoint. But the presence of the immoral government justifies the immoral and outright selfish actions of the protagonist. (Rumsey, 2003).
In “The Castle”, the oppression and, ergo, limitations are similar, yet, due to the time gap between the two works, the oppression takes a form which is a bit different from the one in the movie. Here, unlike the Big Brother government of the film, the relationship between the villagers and the officials of the Castle resembles the relationships between the church institution and everyone else observed only in medieval times. Here, the oppression of the villagers by the bureaucrats cannot even be described as deliberate on the part of the Castle officials, since the villagers seem to be satisfied with their position and quite eagerly put themselves into it themselves.
The protagonists also bear certain similarities, K., much like Lowry, is shown to be more intelligent than the ones around him, at least than the village dwellers, yet the way he exercises this advantage is much different: K. is never shown to be satisfied with his position, he constantly pushes for more, and, especially in his conversations with Frieda, openly talks of being ambitious in an attempt to win her over to his side, succeeding short-term, yet failing ultimately, as is indicated by how long him being betrothed to Frieda lasts and how little it took for one of the assistants to take her away from him.
Also, an important difference: K. is a stranger in the village, unlike Lowry, who, as has been said, is an acting government employee. So, upon his arrival, K. bears no actual responsibility to anyone but himself – as it turns out later his services as a land surveyor are, in fact, not needed. The only responsibility he bears at first is to himself and his ambition. His desire to take place in the community that suits his abilities is the only thing that actually drives him throughout the whole book, even though he acquires other kinds of responsibilities: he vows to marry Frieda, he accepts the position of a school janitor, he makes friends and allies, namely a family of local outcasts, specifically Barnabas, a messenger in service of the Castle, and his sister, Olga, who is said to have fallen in love with K. It can’t be said that all of this doesn’t matter to the protagonist in the slightest; rather, his priorities have been set from the start and remained unchanged despite all circumstances.
Based on these two works, I have come to a conclusion: there are two kinds of responsibilities in the context of any kind of limitations.
The first is personal responsibility, which comes from a moral imperative, a desire to be “a good person”. A saying “one owes it to oneself” comes to mind, and indeed – we owe a lot of things to ourselves based on our morals. For the reasons stated before, this kind of responsibility is subjective.
But there is also the objective responsibility, the one we bear to other people, to our loved ones and friends, to our employer and to the society as a whole. Both of the protagonists fail act according to it; even though in the presented circumstances their actions are somewhat justifiable, if put in context of any other kind, their actions cannot be described as responsible. Their ways are childish, not adult.
References
Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Trans. Anthea Bell. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2009. Print.
Robertson, Ritchie. Introduction and explanatory notes. The Castle. By Franz Kafka. 1926. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2009. Print.
Gilliam, Terry, dir. Brazil. Embassy International Pictures, 1985. Film.
Rumsey, Taylor. "Terry Gilliam" senses of cinema. n. p., December 2003.
Web. December 22, 2014.
