The Ministry of Information is the main governing body of Gilliam’s imagined society. It uses the guise of “counterterrorism effort” to justify its tracking and interrogating of citizens, all while charging exorbitant fees of the people it oppresses. The Department of Records is the section of the Ministry which stores this information. The head of Records is Mr. Kurtzmann, but in reality it is Sam Lowry who runs the department, solves major dilemmas, and even signs documents for the incompetent Kurtzmann.

One such crisis that Sam is called upon to solve at the Department of Records is a wrongful arrest case; in their efforts to track down the rebel heating engineer Archibald “Harry” Tuttle, the Ministry accidentally arrested and interrogated the innocent Archibald Buttle, and the mistake went unnoticed until the information reached the Department of Records. When Sam discovers that Archie Buttle was tortured to death, he offers to take the reimbursement check for Buttle's interrogation fees to Mrs. Buttle. At the Buttle residence in the decrepit Shangri-La Towers, Sam discovers that the woman from his fantasies lives in the same apartment: Jill Layton.

Although Sam is an intelligent and diligent worker, he has never considered leaving the Department of Records. He enjoys the nondescript nature of his work and the fact that he can escape notice--and thus responsibility--in the department. However, once he finds that information about Jill is classified due to her witnessing the Buttle arrest, Sam accepts a promotion to Information Retrieval that his mother used her connections to secure. Sam then proceeds to use his new position to track down the woman from his dreams.

Sam's friend Jack Lint has a high position as an interrogator in Information Retrieval and is privy to the details of the Buttle mix-up; in fact, it was Jack who killed Archie Buttle. After much persuasion, he hands over the file about Jill Layton so that Sam can locate and detain her outside of the Ministry. On his way out, Sam finds Jill in the Ministry lobby protesting the Buttle arrest. Just as she is about to be arrested herself by a squadron of Ministry guards, Sam intervenes and escorts her out of the building. He explains to Jill that she has been appearing in his dreams since before he knew that she existed. Though Jill is apprehensive at first (and understandably so), she is eventually won over by Sam's sincerity and persistence.

Sam knows that the Ministry will be looking for Jill, not only because she witnessed the Buttle arrest but because she is now believed to be in league with Harry Tuttle. To protect Jill, Sam hides her in his mother’s apartments. He then returns to the Ministry, where he breaks into the Deputy Minister, Mr. Helpmann’s, office and changes Jill’s file to list her as dead.

However, the next morning, a Ministry security squad bursts into Mrs. Lowry’s apartment and seizes Sam and Jill. Sam is forced through the demeaning experience of being read the charges against him, which include wasting Ministry time, and being informed of the various options for financing his interrogation. Jack Lint ends up as Sam’s interrogator; he refuses to listen to Sam’s pleas, trutsing the word of the government over that of his friend. However, as he is about to begin torturing Sam, Harry Tuttle rappels down into the interrogation room with a band of heating engineers. A scuffle between the rescuers and the Ministry guards ensues in which Jack is shot and killed. Sam and Tuttle escape the Ministry, and a surreal sequence of events follows: they blow up the Ministry of Information; Tuttle disappears in a pile of paperwork; Sam is chased through the streets by goblins from his dreams. He ends up falling into the back of Jill’s delivery truck, and the two leave the city and establish a cozy home hidden in a peaceful valley.

Suddenly, Jack and Mr. Helpmann intrude onto this scene with puzzled looks on their faces. Helpmann declares that Sam has “got away,” and he and Jack exit. Sam, left alone in the middle of the huge interrogation room, smiles to himself and hums the song “Brazil.”