Life of Brian (1979)

          Members of the famed British comedy troupe Monty Python were already drifting apart by the late ’70s, following the end of their BBC sketch series Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the success of their hilarious medieval spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Nonetheless, the public demand for new Python product proved irresistible. Coincidentally, troupe member Eric Idle used a running gag whenever anyone asked for the title of the collective’s next movie: He said it was Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory. Idle’s idea stuck, after a fashion, so when the six Pythons finally reunited, they made the Biblical satire Life of Brian, which was written by the entire group, designed by in-house animator Terry Gilliam, and directed by troupe member Terry Jones. Audiences expecting the sustained brilliance of Holy Grail were disappointed, although in some respects Life of Brian is a better movie than its predecessor—the picture has a harder satirical edge and a stronger storyline. Unfortunately, those aren’t the qualities people want from Python, and Life of Brian underwhelms as a comedy.

          Set in Judea during the era of the Roman Empire, the film begins with the Three Wise Men arriving to bestow gifts on the baby Jesus. However, they accidentally enter the stable next door to Jesus’ birthplace and fleetingly anoint one Brian Cohen as the messiah. That humiliating mix-up foreshadows  a series of unpleasant events that befall Brian (Graham Chapman) once he reaches adulthood. Repeatedly mistaken for a messiah, Brian gets drawn into the world of Jewish radicals fighting Roman oppression; subsequently, he’s captured by Romans and sentenced to crucifixion.

          While the Pythons present a handful of inspired gags in the course of telling this brazen story, Life of Brian has significant handicaps. The narrative is inherently depressing, and presenting a linear storyline mostly precludes the sort of irreverent nonsense that distinguishes the best Python work. (The brief appearance of space aliens halfway through the movie is a welcome reprieve.) Plus, for every clever line—“We enter the Caesar Augustus Memorial Sewer”—there’s a cheap bit like the scene in which a lisping Pontius Pilate (Michael Palin) scandalizes his subjects by talking about his pal “Biggus Dickus.”

          As in Grail, the Pythons each play multiple characters, but Chapman dominates since the Brian character appears in nearly every scene. And while Chapman’s exasperation is droll (when forced to proclaim his Jewishness, Brian shouts, “I’m a Red Sea pedestrian, and I’m proud of it!”), it’s no fun to watch the downward spiral of a condemned coward. Placing such a character at the center of a Biblical epic is a clever joke, but the narrative contrivance makes Life of Brian feel more cerebral than comedic.

          Still, even though Life of Brian is the least consistently funny of Python’s features, mediocre Python is better than the best efforts from most comedy troupes. Who else could come up with genius vignettes like the scene in which Brian paints anti-Roman graffiti on the side of a palace, only to be interrupted by an uptight centurion (John Cleese), who points out the grammatical errors in Brian’s writing and makes Brian paint his slogan 100 times on the wall as a lesson? That’s Python satire at its most sublime, and exactly the sort of thing Life of Brian does not have in sufficient abundance—although it must be said that the movie concludes with the most fabulously inappropriate musical number in cinematic history, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

Life of Brian: GROOVY

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

          Inspired lunacy from start to finish, the Monty Python comedy troupe’s first narrative feature is rightfully beloved as one of the funniest movies ever made. Clever, perverse, satirical, silly, and sometimes just playfully deranged, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is ostensibly an adaptation of the King Arthur myth, but it’s really the troupe’s first experiment at stringing their surrealistic sketches together as a (more or less) coherent full-length story. So, while the picture represents a significant moment in cinematic history because it was a milestone in co-director Terry Gilliam’s evolution from the Python’s resident animator to a world-class narrative filmmaker, its real value is as an irresistible laugh machine.

          Any list of unforgettable gags in the picture would go on forever, including brilliant contrivances like Sir Robin’s minstrels (who torment him by describing his cowardice in song), the snotty French soldiers guarding a decrepit castle (which they defend against invading Englishmen by launching a cow with a catapult), the persistent but eventually limbless Black Knight (“It’s only a flesh wound!”), the politically conscious farmers who taunt a visiting king (“Can’t you see him repressing me?”), and, of course, the coconuts the Knights of the Round Table use to simulate the sound of the horses they’re not actually riding.

          Right from the beginning of the picture—when ominous opening-credits music is riotously juxtaposed with bizarre subtitled discursions about llamas, Swedish tourist attractions, and crew members who’ve been sacked—the writer/performers who comprise Monty Python use every tool at their disposal to fill the frame with textual, verbal, and visual jokes so that each scene is jammed with dozens of comedy concepts. Ideas from the fertile minds of Gilliam, co-director Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin spill onto the screen so feverishly that watching Holy Grail is like getting an intravenous feed of their whimsical outlook, which is all to the good.

          Inveterate pranksters who take the piss out of every imaginable authority figure and social structure, the Pythons target everything from the media to monarchy to religion in Holy Grail, though some of their best stuff skewers those who are haplessly opportunistic; a great example is the classic “Bring out your dead!” scene in which corpse collectors aren’t too picky about whether the corpses they’re collecting have actually expired. Not everything in the picture is satire, of course, because many of the most heart-stoppingly funny moments in Holy Grail are unhinged non sequiturs, like the killer rabbit that causes one of the Knights of the Round Table to “soil his armor” (twice).

          The lore about Gilliam’s and Jones’ ingenuity is well-known, because the pair worked wonders with minimal resources, accentuating evocative costumes and grubby locations over the pricier production values they couldn’t afford, and, as in all Python projects, the gang saved a bundle by casting themselves in multiple roles. It’s hard to say which Python deserves the MVP prize, but a case could be made for Cleese, whose character roster includes the Black Knight, Sir Lancelot, and the Taunting French Guard—one should not challenge the virtuosity of the man who memorably threatens to “fart in your general direction.”

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: OUTTA SIGHT