In praise of Harry

Although Lloyd explains why we call ourselves The Tuttle Club here, I thought it was worth highlighting this part:

Harry’s spirit is summed up when the hero, Sam Lowry asks Harry about his broken-down, over-engineered, bodged together heating system. Sam says “Can you fix it?” “No,” says Harry, “but I can *bypass* it”. And that’s what I see again and again among this band of misfit, oddball geniuses who I bump into around the web and it’s physical outcroppings, many of whom I now call “friend” and not just in a FaceBook kind of way.

Although we’re not all freedom fighting freelance heating engineers we are good at bypassing the occasional bodge. Harry is nice role model to have in this respect and even Pauline Kael, who wasn’t won over by Gilliam’s Brazil as a whole, was impressed by his qualities:

De Niro’s role is even smaller - no more than a cameo - but, all revved up and chomping on a cigar, he’s a prankster daredevil, a comic strip hero, high-spirited and the life of the party. He even has a healthy color. Tuttle repairs heating systems illicitly (he doesn’t have a license)and when he’s in danger of being caught he slides down a rope as if her were jet-propelled, dropping from the top of an astoundingly tall skyscraper to street level in the blink of an eye. (Tuttle must be the first kinetic Underground Man in movies.)

I love that she picks up on his ability to move between levels so quickly. It’s pure eye candy in the movie, but also represents that zip-line to clarity that so many of us are trying to get a hold of.

He also appeals to those of us that quite fancy wearing balaclavas and corsets from time to time too…