Topic: Monty Python's "The Life of Brian"

[Raggit]

I'm sure many, many folks around here have seen this hilarious gem of a film.  With all the banter going back and fourth about religion and god lately, I was reminded of it.

For anybody who hasn't seen it but has been in on the recent debates of god and religion, I HIGHLY recommend this 1979 film.  If you have an open mind, it really shows why many ex-Christians and skeptics feel the way they do about religion.  If anything, the Life of Brian shows many of the absurdities of organized religion, and the people who follow it without thinking.

I first heard about the film from my dad.  He explained that he "tried to watch it," but it was just too blasphemous and sacreligous.  He called it, "a mockery of the life of Christ."

Now, I wasn't sure where he was coming from when I finally saw it for the first time a few weeks ago.   Jesus appears only in one scene, and the rest of the movie is about a man born in the stable NEXT to Jesus, who is mistaken for the messiah. 

I don't see how it's a "mockery" of Christ.  But then again, he's a fundamentalist Christian, and exhibited a knee-jerk reaction to the film.

Anyway, I'm not making this thread to be yet another continuation of the ongoing religion/god/sexuality debate.  I want to only talk about the movie here.  Anybody else seen it? 

[lo_res_man]

I liked it, and I am a christian, a christian who believes nothing should be immune from "imperial wardrobe" moment. Religion, like any field, is full of pretentious blowhards, who can't take a little heat. So it mocks religion, so what, if they can't stand mocking, too freaking bad. I felt it was good absurd zany fun. Frankly I was more shocked by the window opening moment then anything else. Have at thee infidels, for St. Brian, and the gourd!

[woodz]

i saw it first time round  and the way the Christan fanatics kicked off was just as funny as the film, very clever of the Python crew.. if you want to get mass attention, take the piss out of religion.. it works every time
they couldn't of done it at a better time as far as the UK was concerned, the goody two shoes where still reeling over the punk rock scene and probably thought things couldn't get worse. i bet they thought the world was coming to an end and a total moral decline when they got wind of young Brian lol
Personally i couldn't see what the fuss was about.. the must disturbing thing was seeing Graham Chapman's nods  :

[Radiant]

Love that film. I watched it once with a very christian friend and even she found it funny. If you think about it, it doesn't really make fun of christianity; it makes fun of a lot of weird human habits, such as blindly following people who don't even want to be followed. If it's demeaning, it's not demeaning to the devout, but to the stupid.

Brian: You are all individuals.
Crowd: YES! WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!
Brian: You are all different!
Crowd: YES! WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT!
Person: I'm not.

[Raggit]

I thought the window scene was hilarious!  The way he gets up all relaxed and swings the shutters open, and there's a horde of people out there looking at him naked, and they don't even care!

The funniest scenes are, of course, Pilate talking about his friend Biggus Dickus, and the scene at the colloseum with the People's Front of Judea, where Eric Idle confesses he wants to have babies.  

"But you can't 'ave babies!"

"Don't you oppress me!"

"I'm not oppressing you Stan, you 'avn't got a womb!  Where's the fetus gonna gestate?  You gonna keep it in a box?!"

LOL  

[m0ds]

Great movie!! Spike Milligan too Awesomeo!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I found this to be easily the most boring and lackluster of the Python films.  My favorite remains Holy Grail with Meaning of Life a close second.  I can't even sit through this without falling asleep or turning it off.  Hell, even Jabberwocky is more fun and that wasn't even an official Python film (and has tons of slow/boring parts).

[Haddas]

I found this to be easily the most boring and lackluster of the Python films.  My favorite remains Holy Grail with Meaning of Life a close second.  I can't even sit through this without falling asleep or turning it off.  Hell, even Jabberwocky is more fun and that wasn't even an official Python film (and has tons of slow/boring parts).

BLASPHEMY!

[Adamski]

BLASPHEMY! 

Which brings us nicely to this:

[Andail]

This is one of my favourite movies all time. It's simply perfect.

[Boney]

I found this to be easily the most boring and lackluster of the Python films.  My favorite remains Holy Grail with Meaning of Life a close second.

I'm with you, though I like Meaning of life a little better (I heard that it's the Pythons least favorite of them all because they think it's inconsistent... and it is, but, you know...)

[Ali]

I think it's the best Python film by far, because it's the only one with an ending. The fact that the Python's rarely ended their sketches, instead allowing them to run into one another, was highly innovative. I find it a frustrating with their films.

In visual terms, the Life of Brian isn't as strong as the Holy Grail, though I suspect that's because Terry Gilliam stood back from Terry Jones's somewhat pedestrian direction. I think the Meaning of Life is the poorest as a film, but it does have some great songs and set pieces.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

If you read some interviews with Terry and the gang you actually discover there was indeed a more elaborate ending planned for Holy Grail involving a meeting with giants and such done in both live action and with gillianimation.  The basic excuse is that gilliam was so sick of doing cartoons by that time that they couldn't get him to go for it, and that coupled with a very tiny budget made them turn the ending into what it is now -- a rather unsatisfying and abrupt end without any resolution.  On one of the holy grail special edition dvds there's actually some sketched cells showing the ending as it might have been, but it still doesn't really explain why they were there or if they found the grail.  Meaning of Life had a concise ending, really, and focused on their collective views of life and death: who knows what's going to happen when you die, just enjoy the ride.

[Radiant]

Actually I like the absurdistic ending of The Holy Grail a lot. It's very Python.

[lo_res_man]

I think the holy grail is the funniest python film. Anyone besides me seen that collaberation between the pythons and STL team called "The Ruttles"? GREAT stuff, been a tea drinker myself, I have been on the run my whole life,

[evenwolf]

They're all really good so debating which one is best is something I choose not to do.

I own Meaning of Life because it was the one that eluded me the most.    Life of Brian and Holy Grail always have there own midnight screening somewhere.   (so annoying!  I hope no one here is one of those screaming idiots who ruins the performances by reciting the dialogue line by line in the theater )   

Meaning of Life is wonderful.  I'd say it has the best scenes but I usually can't take it in one sitting.   John Cleese has talked about how sketch comedy is best kept at thirty minutes or maybe an hour.   Two hours is pushing it.    So that's my only grip but having the DVD at my disposal I can go to any chapter and have a laugh.

[Ali]

  John Cleese has talked about how sketch comedy is best kept at thirty minutes or maybe an hour.   Two hours is pushing it.

On a similer note, Gilliam observes that audiences always get bored in the middle of 'And Now For Something Completely Different'. Even when they put the sketches in a different order, people still got bored half way in. As you say, more than 30 minutes of sketches begins to pall.

[fentongames]

Life of Brian is one of the best films ever! It's so hilarious! I'm not sure if I prefer Holy Grail though. The Meaning of Life wasn't quite as good as the others. It had good bits in it, but id doesn't compare with the other films. I love the fact that they're all completely random and they don't make any sence! It's something that works for Monty Python. SPAMALOT is really recommended too, it's a theatre production, it was fantastic. Anyone else seen it?

And remember:

Always look on the bright side of life!
(whistle whistle whistle) 
Always look on the light side of life! 
(whistle whistle whistle) 

[lo_res_man]

Well I like the galaxy song personily, it makes me feel small and big at the same time. I may be a insignificant piece of matter on the edge of a third rate star in a ordanary galaxy. but for all that I am alive which is more then I can say for most of the matter in the universe. I am me, and I can know myself and I can try to know the universe. I am alive!