The Criterion Collection has announced its June lineup of releases and it includes a first 4K remaster for none other than Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, the legendary dystopian film from the 1980s.
Released back in 1985 and directed by Terry Gilliam and co-written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard, Brazil is described as a dystopian sci-fi black comedy film that shows the horrors of a totalitarian and nightmarish bureaucracy.
This is the first 4K restoration for the iconic film and is based on Terry Gilliam’s director’s cut, with Gilliam both supervising and approving the new restoration which has been scanned to 4K and digitally restored. Preorders for the Brazil 4K are now available via Criterion and a street date is set for June 3rd of this year.
The 4K version will sport a 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack and has two regular blu-rays with the non-4K version of the film and a host of special features with audio commentary by Gilliam.
Heavily inspired by George Orwell’s iconic literary classic 1984, Gilliam’s Brazil stars Jonathan Pryce and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm. Though it had issues with a delayed American release, it has since become a film classic.
Here’s a blurb on the new release:
In the dystopian masterpiece Brazil, Jonathan Pryce plays a daydreaming everyman who finds himself caught in the soul-crushing gears of a nightmarish bureaucracy. This cautionary tale by Terry Gilliam, one of the great films of the 1980s, has come to be esteemed alongside antitotalitarian works by the likes of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut. And in terms of set design, cinematography, music, and effects, Brazil is a nonstop dazzler.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration of Terry Gilliam’s director’s cut, supervised and approved by Gilliam, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
Audio commentary by Gilliam- What Is “Brazil”?, Rob Hedden’s on-set documentary
- The Production Notebook, a collection of interviews and video essays, featuring a trove of Brazil-iana from Gilliam’s personal collection
- The Battle of “Brazil,” a documentary about the film’s contentious release, hosted by Jack Mathews and based on his book of the same name
- “Love Conquers All” version, the studio’s ninety-four-minute, happy-ending cut of Brazil, with commentary by Brazil expert David Morgan
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic David Sterritt
- Cover based on a theatrical poster