The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Brazil
53
good job, and you know that you have a voice and you’re confident, it may
get you in trouble in the short term, but in the long term all that matters
is the film that is released. It isn’t the fight, the memos, or the words that
are exchanged—it’s your art, it’s what you are going to be judged for when
you are dead and buried, and it’s worth fighting for. Thank God that Terry
fought for Brazil. Had “love conquered all,” we would have been denied a
real masterpiece.
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association forced Universal’s hand; they
named Brazil Best Picture of the year and Gilliam Best Director. It’s the
one documented case in which critics banded together to save a film,
and that’s a pretty complex relationship. What is the role of the critic?
Is it to critique art or to influence it?
Kelly: Their perfunctory role is to critique art, but in every critic’s heart
is a desire to better the art form, in their dialogue, in their criticism, in the
critical literature they are creating. They want to promote good films and
suppress the bad films, and hopefully make the process better—contribute
and support bold, risky, innovative filmmaking. It should be the duty of any
film critic. I think that if you ask any film critic if he or she has an agenda to
support those films, that critic will say “absolutely.”
It really can make all the difference. You see it all the time, like with
Patty Jenkins’s film Monster, when Roger Ebert was one of the first critics
out there to herald not only Charlize Theron’s performance but also the film
itself. An important film critic like Roger Ebert can certainly rescue a film
from oblivion, and I think that has to warm any critic’s heart to have the
power to do something like that.
Gilliam told the New York Times in 1986 that “you can’t talk about artistic
values or social values or philosophical values; economic values are
the only ones that count.” Has Hollywood changed?
Kelly: I think economic values have only been foregrounded in the vertical
integration of studios. We’re now seeing gigantic corporations merging
with one another. There’s talk of synergy and vertical integration. Karl Marx
is chuckling in his grave somewhere because it all comes down to one word:
money. It costs a lot of money to create these works of art, and ultimately