Viking Night: Monty Python's Life of Brian
By Bruce Hall
January 25, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Although to be fair, I am willing to cut Face/Off some slack. Despite being a terrible movie, it is paradoxically one of the greatest things that has ever happened. Nicolas Cage and John Travolta play mortal enemies who, for reasons that are stupid, switch faces. To this day, that remains the best idea for a movie that I have ever heard. The finished product was a steaming pile of dog vomit, but I don’t want to get too far off track. My point is that a case of mistaken identity can sometimes be an organic device that adds depth and intrigue to your story.
Or it can just be an excuse for two of the world’s biggest weirdos to spend a couple of hours setting off explosives and doing hilariously inaccurate impressions of one another. And as for White Chicks, I’m actually sorry I brought it up. Like I said, there are a lot of ways to approach this kind of story.
So obviously, when Monty Python’s Life of Brian takes a crack at this well-worn cliché, it does so entirely on its own terms. For those of you not familiar with Monty Python, I would remind you that 99 percent of ISIS recruits are also not familiar with Monty Python, so just think about what kind of company you’re keeping. Also, it’s the movie where the guy who was Jesus Christ’s next door neighbor gets mistaken for the Messiah.
Wait, what?
Well, imagine that as the baby Jesus was born, in the stable right next door, so too was Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman). Just like the Christs, the Cohens live under Roman occupation. If you didn’t sleep through ninth grade history, you’ll remember that this was both a good and bad thing. When the Romans rolled into your town, they brought with them running water, education, healthcare, entertainment and agriculture. On the down side, their preferred methods of dealing with dissent all involved torture and death. And then, usually, more torture.
Because of this, Jesus grows up to deliver the Sermon on the Mount. Brian grows up to be an aimless romantic, content to watch the world change from the sidelines. This is what he’s doing as the Book of Mark unfolds before him; standing on the fringe of the crowd, along with a bickering group of intellectuals. More or less oblivious to both the sermon and the argument next to him, Brian eventually trucks off to his day job, a vendor of assorted viscera at gladiator games. I don’t know how much you got paid to sell badger spleens back in Ancient Times, but it doesn’t look like enough.
It’s here that he runs into the People’s Front of Judea. There are resistant factions to Roman occupation, and the People’s Front is only one of many. But since the number one cause of death in ancient Judea was “fucking with Romans,” The People’s Front spends most of their time making speeches to each other about what they’d really like to do to the Romans one day, as soon as they get around to it. They’re basically every table of leftist blowhards at every college pizza joint in America.
One of them is a fetching brunette named Judith (Sue Jones-Davies), who catches Brian’s eye. And just like that, the People’s Front has a new member. Judith actually kind of likes the kid, but the others take advantage of his trusting nature to volunteer him for all the dangerous missions they’re too afraid to take on. Obviously this leads to shenanigans, but it also eventually leads to Brian getting into a little trouble with the Romans. It’s at this time, while on the run, that he’s forced to pose as a street prophet.
He absently repeats a few things he might have heard Jesus say and just like that, he’s got his own followers. That’s about the time it’ll dawn on you, if it hasn’t already, that Life of Brian isn’t a sendup of religion. It’s a send up of the way humans shape - and allow themselves to be shaped by - ideas.
The longest running gags in this movie revolve around what little effort most people put into developing the way they think. Out of touch intellectuals standing just outside earshot of Christ’s sermon debate the finer points of a speech they can’t even hear. The People’s Front spends more time bickering about gender issues and hiding from Romans than they do making a difference.
The Romans themselves are so hilariously efficient that they’ll correct the grammar on your graffiti, and have turned crucifixion into an industry (the latter of which is, sadly, historically accurate). And as for the poor people following Brian around, well...they’re the ones Jesus said would inherit the earth, right? So desperate are they to be led, they interpret Brian’s every action as something divine, and struggle amongst themselves to divine meaning from it. You can watch them break into factions right before your eyes.
And that’s what I’ve ended up thinking every time I’ve seen Life of Brian. I’ve actually met people who are bothered by this film because of the subject matter, and that’s too bad. I don’t see it as being about religion as much as it is the human tendency to turn facts into fantasy into dogma. Historically, this process begins literally moments after any given event, and to me, that’s where the humor in Life of Brian really comes from. Yes, John Cleese’s nitpicky Centurion is hilarious, and I’ll never get tired of hearing Michael Palin say “Biggus Dickus.”
But Palin also plays a leper who, after being cured by Jesus, resents the fact that it’s harder for a healthy man to make a living as a beggar. That’s humanity in a nutshell for you. And it’s the reason most of the laughs I get from this movie are from things like the way Brian’s followers immediately experience a sectarian schism over the significance of one of his sandals. Life of Brian is, for my money, the best and most fully fleshed out of the Python films.
And to those whom it matters, if you’re willing to remember that you’re not in Sunday school and it’s okay to laugh, you will be rewarded. I literally always forget about the Mistaken Messiah thing, because in the end it doesn’t matter. The Pythons have some very salient points to make about the human condition. They’re more than worth everyone thinking about and they more than offset the near total absence of Travolta-related face-switching.
If that’s the worst thing I can think of to say about it, you can consider it a classic.