Brazil, the "Love Conquers All" version

Brazil is on the yahoo list of political satire movies we're considering for our fun Family Film Festival. We watched the full-length version back in September and have been meaning to watch it again. It's one of those movies that seems to require more than one viewing. For tonight, though, we decided to go with the shorter version not approved by the director -the version with the happy ending. The only problem is that this version makes no sense at all. It's like excerpts from the longer version with some happy parts added, but if we hadn't seen the longer version we wouldn't have been able to make any sense at all of this one. The Husband said, "It reminds me of Brazil," and that's about the most we can say for it.

The New York Times has a review of Brazil here. Slashdot's review is here. Roger Ebert reviews it here. These are not specifically reviews of this shorter version.

The Criterion Contraption's review says,

In Brazil, Terry Gilliam asks the audience to imagine a world where the government wages a never-ending war with shadowy terrorists, a world where civil liberties are being destroyed in the name of security, a world where torture becomes official state policy in order to conduct more efficient interrogations of suspected terrorists. What's more, in Gilliam's fictional world, the central government is not just secretive but incompetent. Mistakes are made, leading to the imprisonment and torture of innocents.
...
Despite the description, Brazil is not a documentary.

Senses of Cinema has a page on director Terry Gilliam.