Monty Python’s Life of Brian

In Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, Pilate dismisses Jesus as “just another Jewish politician.” Jesus a politician? The idea has enraged some and inspired others. Written by Paul Schrader, the 1988 film was harassed from the word “go” but it wasn’t the only movie of its kind to be attacked by the mob, nine years earlier Monty Python’s Life of Brian faced its own street fight, but for all the wrong reasons: condemned by legions as blasphemous, Life of Brian is mostly a knockabout farce, a Carry On film for eggheads. Set in Jerusalem in approximately 33 A.D., the Plebeians and street peddlers have a distinct resemblance to contemporary Londoners circa 1979. Whether it’s ancient Rome or present-day England, in this world full of con artists and their marks, the Pythons save their real venom not for the wolves in sheep’s clothing, but the sheep themselves.

Directed by Terry Jones and written with his fellow Pythons, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin, Life of Brian is a fractured fable about about a man in the wrong place at the very wrong time. Chapman plays Brian, a hapless Candide who keeps finding himself in proximity to a Nazarene preacher whose stirring message of peace resonates with the populace while rankling the Roman government, in particular Pilate himself, a marble-mouthed oaf played by Palin. As expected in any classic burlesque, Brian finds himself mistaken for the revolutionary minister with all the backlash that entails; Brian’s followers don’t seem to really understand his own message (“You’ve got to figure it out for yourselves!”) while his humanistic (and  political) advocacy is rewarded with crucifixion (under the unwritten Python rules, this finale must be staged as a musical).

Financed by British royalty (George Harrison put up the lion’s share of the cash), the film’s low budget appearance is inescapable but its loose and funky pacing is no hindrance; it’s just that Jones’ pedestrian direction lacks the necessary visual panache—the Pythons are brainy comedians but absurd sight gags are baked into the cake (they might have engaged Gilliam, right there on the sidelines, whose own work is nothing if not eye popping). But when the jokes are prime Python (like the running gag of Biggus Dickus and his wife, Incontinentia Buttocks, or an unexpected close encounter with a Muppet-like alien), who’s to complain.

The film is at its best in its skewering of cults big and small, represented by a motley crew of self-absorbed fussbudgets with too much time on their hands: The People’s Front of Judea, The Judean People’s Front, The Judean Popular People’s Front, and The Campaign for a Free Galilee. Each tiny faction is more interested in their own petty grievances than any sort of justice and these curmudgeons keep splintering into new, and smaller factions. This is the core of the film, and the reason contemporary zealots attacked it, the movie was not lampooning Christ, the Pythons were lampooning them.

Outraged protests can boost ticket sales better than reviews. The outcry over A Clockwork Orange led Stanley Kubrick to withdraw it from British distribution, thereby making it a must-see. Death threats were leveled at Scorsese while terrorist attacks on theaters were just part of the campaigns waged against The Last Temptation of Christ with filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli calling it “truly horrible, completely deranged.”

As for Brian, one of those protests happened on live TV when Malcolm Muggeridge and Bishop Mervyn Stockwood were interviewed alongside two Python spokesmen, John Cleese and Michael Palin. The debate/debacle occurred on the BBC chat show Friday Night, Saturday Morning on November 9, 1979. The Pythons may have expected a typically dry conversation but what they got was the ultimate in bad faith arguments. Stockwood’s preening parting shot at the Pythons, ”Well, I hope you make your 30 pieces of silver” was self-righteous in the way that only a professional scold can be. More ridiculous because 40 years on, Life of Brian seems positively docile.

Oddly, this riveting moment is absent from an otherwise stellar Criterion release which boasts a lovely new 4K digital restoration, supervised by Terry Gilliam and two separate audio commentaries featuring Gilliam, Cleese, Idle, Jones, and Palin. Also worth noting are two documentaries, The Story of Brian (2007), and a making-of film, The Pythons (1979), filmed on location during production. There’s also a few deleted scenes with commentary by the Pythons and, a special favorite, radio promos starring Mrs. Cleese, Mrs. Gilliam, Mrs. Idle, and Palin’s dentist

Here’s the rundown from Criterion’s site.

Here’s the full 30 minute showdown between Muggeridge/Stockwood and Cleese/Palin.

And here’s Brian Trenchard-Smith on the other Brian: