'e's not the messiah, 'e's a very naughty boy!
Ah, Monty Python. Fifty years ago, they burst into the pioneering grounds of sketch comedy with all sorts of weirdness about Scotsmen, lethal jokes that ended WW2, and, all too expectedly, the Spanish Inquisition. You've probably heard at least some of the routines parroted at length by people, including the one actually about a parrot. And indeed, before the internet truly became universal, you couldn't really move for lines and jokes and references among nerds online, before kids today with their memes displaced all that.
Still, their legacy endures, especially in cinema--many people hold up 1975's Monty Python and the Holy Grail as their magnum opus. But my favorite of the Python films--not to diss Holy Grail of course--is the one from forty years ago, the one budgeted by a Beatle, '79's Life of Brian. And hey, the beginning at least ties into the Christmas season, so all the better.
The setup is one that got movie distributors very nervous back in the late seventies--a lampooning of religious zealotry that focuses on a young man called Brian (Graham Chapman) in 1st century Judea, born just down the road from the stable of Jesus Christ himself, and thirty-odd years later ends up getting tangled in rebel groups trying very ineffectively to rise up against the Roman regime. Of course, as the Pythons pointed out, the film isn't so much about the tenets of any religion itself so much as blind dogmatism --and with their usual black comedy, this gets lampooned off the bat with a hilarious scene where a priest leading a stoning ends up with a huge boulder dumped on him after one wayward mention of Jehovah.
I could talk all day about random scenes and go 'this is amazingly funny' or 'this still cracks me up'--like the Roman officer played by John Cleese who makes sure that seditious graffiti in Latin is grammatically correct--so I guess I should explain why this is indeed my favorite over Holy Grail (and Meaning of Life, but we'll get to that). For one, it actually has a plot--and one that sees poor Brian go from an unwilling messiah to the crucifixion hill itself. You do end up getting some sympathy for the poor guy, and that just makes the trademark Python macabre humor twist in all the more. So when a crack Judean suicide squad ends up taking its mission very literally right at the last moment, it makes the sheer absurdity of everything dumped on our hero hit all the better. And then the Eric Idle whistling kicks in.
There's of course the political jabs, some of which are specific to the British scene of the late seventies, but some, like the fracturing groups of 'splitters', still hold up today. A a couple are a bit more uncomfortable, but for the time, could've turned out much worse to our eyes. Still, it's Python, and not being entirely comfortable was their schtick.
Oh yeah, and there's also the bit where Brian falls off a tower into an alien ship and momentarily enters a Star Wars parody. Because why the hell not.
So, yeah. Holy Grail gets quoted by the scriptload to this day and still has its hilarity, but to me, Life of Brian always worked a little better as a film, and turned out a little funnier for it. Taking on the subject matter it did was certainly ballsy in 1979, and to some degree still holds up in 2019. It was banned in many places back then, and indeed, the whole controversy itself ended up being parodied by British comedy itself. Perhaps it's that which makes the flick a bit more interesting to me. Nevertheless, after this, we had the Meaning of Life in 1983, the final Python film before Chapman unfortunately passed away; one that had its share of memorable skits, as well as gratuitous gross-out. It's one I appreciate, but by Michael Palin's own admission, the writing was very slapdash, and it shows a bit.
Ultimately, all I have to say is--I like this film, and you should like it too, for you are all individuals who should think for yourselves (except for that guy there).
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