“…If you don’t respond to Sam Lowry’s plight, the picture has no core, but it’s hard to worry about whether somebody will get killed if he doesn’t seem alive to start with. [Pryce’s] Sam is pale and dead-eyed; he looks like a taller version of Alec Guinness, but Guinness’s anonymous men let you in on their furtive sparks of nonconformity, and they had some charm. Pryce plays Sam too straight and too wistfully. It’s a real crapehanger’s performance.”
-Pauline Kael reviewing Brazil.
“You’re full of shit, Pauline. Jonathan is Jimmy Stewart and Alec Guinness. It’s a very clever performance, and it’s sympathetic and it’s funny and it’s moving and it’s vulnerable and it’s thick-skinned and it’s everything. “Too straight and too wistful”? What does she want, Pee Wee Herman? You’re all wrong, Pauline. Pack it up.”
-Terry Gilliams responds.
Seen in The Battle Of Brazil, 1998 edition.