New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles: Finally available on DVD thanks to Criterion, this three and a half hour epic in miniature builds a wall of tension thanks to eight-minute long takes and a complete lack of close ups, point of view shots, or any suggestion of interior psychology. As Jeanne, Delphine Seyrig is the original domestic goddess. Not for the weak-willed.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show: I was finally de-virginized at age 28. I have belted out Science Fiction/ Double Feature at karaoke halls and am comfortable enough with my sexuality to say that Tim Curry is hotter here than Susan Sarandon.

The Passenger: Antonioni teams with Nicholson for an existential crisis dressed up as a thriller and the latter contributes a wonderfully subdued performance. I don't want to know how Antonioni pulled off the closing unbroken tracking shot. Some mysteries should remain as such.

And then, there's Monty Python and the Holy Grail. For their follow-up to And Now For Something Completely Different, the sextet from England delivered 90 minutes of songs, blood, and lunacy and in the process ruined any hope for seriousness that a lot of lesser (straight-faced) historical epics aspired to. I remember laughing out loud watching Braveheart in the theater in May ‘95 because much of the overly violent bone crushing reminded me of the Black Knight's sword fight with King Arthur. Like some other comedies - So I Married an Axe Murderer, National Lampoon's Vacation, Weekend at Bernie's - Holy Grail is for me a sure-fire spirit picker-upper to return to again and again. Unlike those others, it is also extraordinarily well assembled. It's probably too much to think that it would ever have had a chance to be nominated for an Oscar but in many of the major and technical categories, it would have deserved.

As referenced in an earlier column, I was denied access to this film as a child and didn't view in its entirety until junior high (I specifically chose it as my reward one semester for getting straight As). I wish I could say I appreciated it all back then, but that would be denying the genius of the multiple levels with which the Pythons stacked the Holy Grail. The visual lunacy and silly behavior can appeal to young ones while the more intricate wordplay, conversational digressions and plot meta-antics are there for repeat viewings and observations, as one grows older. I remember being very confused as a 12-year-old when the film just...ended. Now, as an adult, I wish there were more films that could find a way to present the credits at the beginning so that the film's ending could come as a surprise. And thanks to theatrical re-releases and DVD home viewing, it is possible to actually make out the wackiness of Holy Grail's opening credits and in the animated sequences and spot various assorted insanity happening in the margins of the frame.

My intent is not to make a case for Holy Grail being a great film on the script level or the acting level as I feel that has been done to death and I don't have a lot new to add. What I want to briefly shower praise on is how the look of the film - the cinematography, the production and costume design - works as well as the material does. This is, in its own way, as staggeringly gorgeous and visually intoxicating a film as Barry Lyndon. Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, with collaborators including Terry Bedford, John Hackney, Roy Smith, and Hazel Pethig, anchor the farcical proceedings in both lush green hillsides and fog so thick it seems to envelop you. A majestic castle towers lonely in the distance and the mud and water that must be crossed to get there seem suitably mucky and imposing. The violence is ridiculously bloody, there are a lot of unexpected and accidental deaths and this brutality becomes transformed into awkwardness well choreographed. The segues into and out of animation are razor sharp and the film's purposeful meandering never feels gratuitous. If the crucifixion scene at the end of Life of Brian is a bleakly comic reminder that life will keep on going until it doesn't, then the in medias res abruptness of the police shutting down the movie, the story, the history of Holy Grail drives the point home that "it doesn't" could happen at any time.

As the exchange between the peasants quoted at this column's start suggests, there was a lot of shit around back then and unless you had the means to keep out of its way, it would probably wind up bespattering you. Watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail and how well it seems to capture the feeling of an historical epoch (and then proceeds to set the epoch on fire and watch it burn), one can almost smell the muck and the shit.

Or maybe that's just me envisioning the diapers I am about to start changing.

Next time: A sideline into kiddie fare. Will this become permanent? I look at a Disney sequel from the late ‘70s (better than the original) and a non-Disney animated part two from the mid-‘80s (not good at all).

Continued:       1       2       3