A film that offends anyone and everyone would never be made today, and yet still it ranks as one of the best comedies all time for obvious reasons. The point – to be sure, I am not entirely certain there is a single point – appears to be that everyone is searching for something, but we should be careful what we latch onto.
I think it is fair to say that Monty Python’s Life of Brian would never be made today. Even in the comedy heyday of the 1970’s, when provocative satirists like George Carlin made their living skewering every sacred cow imaginable, the film, which imagines a man who is born at the same time as Jesus Christ and is ultimately mistaken as a savior, was controversial. So much so, the original financiers, EMI Films, pulled out of the production at the last moment after Bernald Delfont finally read the script and realized what the British comedy troupe had planned. Terry Gilliam, an original member of Monty Python, lead animator, and future director of the classic Time Bandits and Brazil, described it this way, “They pulled out on the Thursday. The crew was supposed to be leaving on the Saturday. Disastrous. It was because they read the script…finally.” The film was only saved because former Beatle and fellow Brit, George Harrison, stepped in and arranged the financing under a new HandmadeFilms Banner. Controversy continued to accompany its release in 1979. Some found the film blasphemous, prompting 39 local authorities in the UK to either ban it outright or impose an X rating. Ireland, Norway, and Italy banned the film, with the ban in Italy lasting for a full decade. Critics, however, were more enthused. Leonard Maltin claimed, “This will probably offend every creed and denomination equally, but it shouldn’t. The funniest and most sustained feature from Britain’s bad boys.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby called it “the foulest-spoken biblical epic ever made, as well as the best-humored—a nonstop orgy of assaults, not on anyone’s virtue, but on the funny bone. It makes no difference that some of the routines fall flat because there are always others coming along immediately after that succeed.” Robert Ebert wrote, “What’s endearing about the Pythons is their good cheer, their irreverence, their willingness to allow comic situations to develop through a gradual accumulation of small insanities.” Today, it is regularly ranked as one of the greatest comedies ever made, earning a 96% certified fresh rating on the review aggregation website, Rotten Tomatoes.
The film itself is ludicrous in both premise and execution, both then and now. It opens with the three wise men of the Bible mistaking Jesus’ birth place and attempting to give the three gifts to the wrong child, complete with the mistaken mother claiming she doesn’t need any Myrrh. It closes with this baby, all grown up as Brian Cohen, left for dead on the cross complete with a musical number after a series of mishaps, miscommunications, and outright betrayals. In the interim, Brian goes from a nobody to the savior for no real reason, save the mob that believes he possesses some kind of secret to eternal life after he attempted to hide himself on a platform running from the Romans. The details of the plot, however, are not the point in a Monty Python film. Instead, the narrative is used to set up a series of absurd vignettes which at times are only tangentially related to the main story. In Life of Brian, there are three primary sets of characters that partake in these sequences. The Romans, currently occupying Jerusalem. A radical, socialist organization, who seeks a revolution against the Roman oppressors. There are also characters centered around Brian himself, who interacts with both groups before forming one of his own as the savior. No, one of course, in any of these groups is safe and everyone is variously lampooned. The Romans are necessarily the antagonists, and it should not come as much of a surprise that they are depicted as largely incompetent, bureaucratic, and out of touch. Pontius Pilate and his close friend, Bigus Dickus, both appear to have strange speech impediments, making them sound outlandish and ridiculous – even to their own Centurion legion, who end up in trouble when they simply can’t stop laughing every time Pilate mentions Dickus, who “wanks as high as any in Wome!” Together, the two preside over the Jerusalem Coliseum, where they promise to free a prisoner, only the crowd keeps calling out the wrong name, forcing him to keep mispronouncing “Rs.” Roger? (Woger?) Roderick? (Woderick?) “Centuwion, do we have anyone of that name in the gawwison?” What they lack in smarts, they make up for in process and in that regard, they have a procedure for everything, including crucifixions which are envisioned as something of the line for an amusement park ride where an attendant tells the doomed souls where to go with a smile. Here for a crucifixion? Good…
Ostensibly, the radicals seeking revolution are the protagonists, striving to shuffle off the yoke of oppression, but they are subject to the same level of ridicule, if not even more so given they can’t even easily articulate precisely what is so horrible about the Romans in the first place. In one classic sequence, the would-be leader of the “People’s Front of Judea” claims the Romans have never done anything for Jerusalem, only to have his fellow revolutionaries note that they built the aqueducts, sewers, sanitation, education, healthcare, and just about everything else that keeps a city running. The People’s Front of Judea isn’t the only revolutionary game in town either. Instead, they are sworn enemies to various groups with slightly different names to the point where they slaughter each other before turning on the Romans. Even within an individual group, they rarely agree, spending most of their time arguing about the nature of their oppression, their goals, their organization, and even who they represent, calling meetings to order, logging minutes, making motions, and doing effectively nothing. When one of them, Loretta, proclaims he wants to be a woman and have babies in a sequence decades ahead of its time, others are astounded. The only thing that brings them together is the idea that the Romans, rather than biology, are preventing a man from becoming a woman and having babies of their own. At the very least, men should have a right to have babies. Brian himself is initially attracted to the group because he is intrigued by a female member, and agrees to prove himself by an act of vandalism. They have one requirement, “If you want to join the People’s Front of Judea, you have to really hate the Romans.” He is then asked to participate in the kidnapping of Pilate’s wife, which goes awry when another group has the same plan and the two kill each other instead. Brian is captured, but escapes only to be proclaimed the savior. A crowd finds him naked in his apartment, and becomes even more convinced because he refuses to claim he is, in fact, the savior. The People’s Front of Judea seeks to take advantage of his newfound celebrity, leading to Brian being captured again. He meets another prisoner who tells him that he has it easy even as he’s headed for crucifixion. “You’ve had a hard time? I’ve been here five years; they only hung me the right way up yesterday.” In the meantime, the People’s Front of Judea agrees that immediate action is needed, then proceeds to debate it endlessly, talking a lot and doing precisely nothing.
Brian might have been saved for his fate, were it not for the incompetence of the Romans, who try to set him free, but can’t determine which of the 40 crucified men and women he is, and end up releasing the wrong doomed prisoner. Even then, Brian has multiple opportunities for rescue after the arrival of a suicide squad from a competing liberation movement scares the guards away, then promptly kills themselves and no one else. The People’s Front of Judea finally swings into action, arriving to inform him that they have drafted a letter on his behalf to let everyone know that they are proud of his martyrdom and his sacrifice will not go unremembered, taking advantage of the situation for their own political goals. They leave him to die, presumably to debate more motions. His love interest, Judith, arrives as well, and thanks him once more for his sacrifice. She too will never forget him. Even his mother refuses to save him, claiming she regrets raising him in the first place. At the end, his only solace is a group singalong, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” If all of this sounds (more than vaguely ludicrous) it certainly is. The film is variously silly – Bigus Dickus – scathing – what have the Romans ever done for us? – and topical – Brian’s disciples refuse to accept that they can make individual choices about how to lead their lives, and do not need to rely on him as a savior for everything. In a sense, it’s even tragic considering Brian’s hapless desire for a woman directly leads to his imprisonment, betrayal, and death.
There are sequences which are scandalous – Brian opens a window fully nude and then fights with his mother over naked Judith who has abnormally bushy pubic hair. There are those which are strange, making little sense at all – during Brian’s initial escape from the Romans, he’s picked up by aliens from outer space and takes a trip beyond the planet for no obvious reason. There are those that are just plain tragically funny – a priest offers to help a doomed man carry his cross, only for the man to run away and leave him to his fate. To say it makes sense is an overstatement, though it certainly has a specific kind of twisted logic, as if there was a real movie in there somewhere, but the crew from Monty Python simply refused to make it. There is a plot, however, unbelievable. There are characters with something resembling motivations. There are scenes with some type of logical conflict and progression. All of it, however, is subservient to comedy, and the moment things appear to be moving in anything resembling a normal direction, as in how an ordinary movie or ordinary story might progress, the creators veer off on some tangent, whether laugh out loud funny, mildly amusing, or even groan inducing. Therefore, one watches it all with a certain wry detachment, unsure what – if anything should be taken seriously – vaguely invested in the outcome, but also knowing that the ride is more important than any single theme, lesson, or character. Ultimately, it is easy to simply dismiss the whole thing as blasphemous given the religious subject matter as many have done, but that would be missing whatever point there is. The mob of true believers is certainly held up to ridicule, but not simply because they believe. It’s because they are desperate for a belief of any kind and a belief in anyone – even poor, useless Brian – will suffice. This unites them with the radical liberationists who define themselves only in opposition against Rome for any reason, and the Romans themselves who believe in only Rome. The point – to be sure, I am not entirely certain there is a single point – appears to be that everyone is searching for something, but we should be careful what we latch onto and instead trust in our own individuality and beliefs to find a path forward in a life full of contradictions, mistaken identities, and other accidents, either for good or ill. As Brian himself tries to inform his unwanted flock, “Look. You’ve got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves. You’re all individuals!”
This should not be controversial, and yet the controversy surrounding the film continues to this day, only this time around it’s not religious people who are upset, it’s progressives. Earlier this year, Monty Python alum John Cleese announced that a new stage adaptation planned for 2024 would not cut one of the more controversial scenes to modern sensibilities, Loretta’s desire to call herself a woman and claim she can have children. As Variety put it in June, “Monty Python star John Cleese has expressed disdain for modern sensibilities and ‘PC culture’ on several occasions in recent years. The comedian found a new battleground for those convictions by claiming that his plans to mount a stage adaptation of the 1979 comedy ‘Life of Brian’ have been ‘misreported’ by the Daily Mail (in a now amended article), particularly in regards to the potential decision to revive a controversial scene involving a transgender character.” “A few days ago I spoke to an audience outside London. I told them I was adapting the ‘Life of Brian’ so that we could do it as a stage show (NOT a musical). I said that we’d had a table-reading of the latest draft in NYC a year ago,” Mr. Cleese wrote on Twitter. “All the actors — several of them Tony winners — had advised me strongly to cut the Loretta scene. I have, of course, no intention of doing so.” “These were absolutely top-class Broadway performers and they were adamant that we would not get away with doing the scene in NYC!” He continued. “Producers tend to be scaredy-cats, and they don’t remember that the protests in NYC when ‘Brian’ was released meant we never needed to do publicity!!” We should applaud Mr. Cleese for standing his artistic ground, even as we acknowledge comedy will never be the same again. The Life of Brian was not alone in taking aim at everyone and everything in the 1970s. Mel Brook’s classic Blazing Saddles came out five years earlier, literally a sledgehammer to race relations. National Lampoon’s Animal House debuted the year before, pummeling power structures, class roles, and social mores. Steve Martin’s The Jerk appeared the same year, and left no one untouched. Today, however, some cows are more sacred than others, and comedy is the worse for it, if not dead entirely. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself when was the last time a movie like any of these came out, period, much less a future classic?
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 