The Easter Lesson

At Ezra Klein's, Stephen of The Thinkery presents the Easter message:

Ezra Klein: This Is Why The English Are Better Than Us: So on this Holy Saturday, the penultimate day of the most sacred week in Christianity, if you have the time, go find a copy of Life of Brian and watch it.... The following is my favorite scene from the movie. Feel free to share your own favorite scenes or quotes in comments. Consider it our Holy Saturday devotional.

Monty Python's Life of Brian is the ultimate Easter movie. Second is The Robe.

Comments

[anne]

http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?res=9900E2DD1339E732A25754C1A96E9C946890D6CF

August 17, 1979

'Monty Python's Life of Brian':Gospel of Lunacy
VINCENT CANBY

FOLLOWING the star, the Three Wise Men make their way across the desert to the manger to adore the newborn babe, tended by his mum, a snaggle-toothed crone named Mandy. Until they produce their gifts, Mandy will have none of the Three Wise Men, whom she takes for fortunetellers. Mandy grabs the gold and the frankincense but is suspicious of the myrrh. "What is myrrh?" she asks with a sniff. "It sounds like some kind of animal to me. Something with horns . . ."

Thus begins "Monty Python's Life of Brian," which should restore our confidence in the belief that not all of the earth's unnatural resources have been depleted. Just when you thought that the uproarious English comedy troupe had taken bad taste as far as it could go in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," along comes "Monty Python's Life of Brian" to demonstrate that it's possible to go even farther in delirious offensiveness. Bad taste of this order is rare but not yet dead.

"Monty Python's Life of Brian," which opens today at the Cinema 1, succeeds in sending up not only movies like "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and "King of Kings," but also a lot of the false piety attached to the source material. It is the foulest-spoken bibical 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. The film is like a Hovercraft fueled by comic energy. When it comes to a dry patch, it flies blithely over with no reduction in speed.

"Life of Brian" is the not-so-reverent account of the life, times and apotheosis of one Brian of Nazareth (Graham Chapman), a none-too-bright, would-be Judean freedom fighter who deeply annoys Pontius Pilate and whom people keep trying to turn into a messiah. According to the Monty Python gospel, the principal business in the Holy Land is the organization of inept liberation movements, while the people are made dozy by dozens of aspiring messiahs, including one fellow who warns of the coming of the awful day when "things will go astray . . . a father's hammer, various household items . . ." ...

[MaryLou]

Y'know, Brad, I guess this is funny, but coming as it did on Holy Saturday, it really offended me. I expect better of you.

[no name]

Life of Brian came out the same year (1979) as Steve Martin's "Comedy is not Pretty," which features the non-conformists' oath:
I PROMISE TO BE DIFFERENT! (I promise to be different!)

I PROMISE TO BE UNIQUE! (I promise to be unique!)

I PROMISE NOT TO REPEAT THINGS OTHER PEOPLE SAY! (I promise ... )

Was this just in the air in 1979 or did one or the other borrow?

[no name]

This is eerily similar to stuff from Steve Martin that Google tells me came out the same year (1979). Was this just in the air, or did someone borrow?

The non-conformists' oath:
I PROMISE TO BE DIFFERENT! (I promise to be different!)

I PROMISE TO BE UNIQUE! (I promise to be unique!)

I PROMISE NOT TO REPEAT THINGS OTHER PEOPLE SAY! (I promise ... )

[web tasarım]

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[somedude]

"Y'know, Brad, I guess this is funny, but coming as it did on Holy Saturday, it really offended me. I expect better of you."

Truly pathetic. If you can find yourself offended by this your faith must not be strong at all.

[Tuco]

When children are easily offended we call them cranky and put them down for a nap. It's interesting then that upon reaching adulthood being easily offended is considered by many to be a mark of character.

[failingeconomist]

I have to say that my favourite part of the movied is something else. The Judean People's Front, the Popular Front for Judea and so on.
It's a stunningly good satire of te various Trotskyist, Maoist etc groupuscules that were found on the British left in the 70s. People arguing and splitting as a result of reading one or another line of Gramsci one way or another, or Proudhon.
There was vastly more effort put into denigrating those only a fraction away in political outlook than there was in actually fighting against the man.
Rather like some parts of Libertarianism (like the Objectivists) these days.
From Ezra's comments thread as well, the Holy Grail has its moment: you can't base an entire system of governance on a watery bint with a sword for example.

[Robin]

"...like some parts of Libertarianism (like the Objectivists)..."

Funnily, the crowd chanting "We are all individuals" in that scene is probably the best, concise description of Randians out there.

[andres]

Always look on the bright side of life, MaryLou ;-)

[Jon Fernquest]

All I see is a big white space.

Must be one of those YouTube videos banned in Thailand.

Now I can't watch any of Brad DeLong's morning coffees, I guess, either.

[Ralph Hitchens]

Like Jon Fernquest, all I see (behind a US Government agency firewall) is big white space. I hope it's the scene where the Judean Peoples' Front (or the PFJ) are getting all worked up about "What have the Romans ever done for us?" If not that, perhaps the Sermon on the Mount scene, "Blessed are the cheesemakers" and "The Greeks shall inherit the earth."

[anne]

http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=Monty%20Python%20and%20the%20Holy%20Grail%20%28Movie%29&title2=&reviewer=&pdate=19750428&v_id=

April 28, 1975

'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'
By NEW YORK TIMES

A foolish constancy is the hobgoblin of little minds and of some movie critics (who may or may not have little minds) when writing about the films of comedians.

In his own day, poor old W. C. Fields was always being rapped for not making movies that were as funny, from start to finish, as his adoring critics found bits of them to be. I'm afraid that once or twice I've gone so far as to suggest that a certain film by Woody Allen or Mel Brooks hasn't been consistently funny, that is, that there were some parts that weren't as funny as other parts. However, as any surveyor of anything will tell you, you can't have a high spot unless you have a low one from which to survey it.

All of which is a round about way of saying that "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" has some low spots but that anyone at all fond of the members of this brilliant British comedy group—which more or less justifies Sunday night television in New York—shouldn't care less.

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail," which opened yesterday at the Cinema 2, is a marvelously particular kind of lunatic endeavor. It's been collectively written by the Python troupe and jointly directed by two of them (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones) so effectively that I'm beginning to suspect that there really aren't six of them but only one, a fellow with several dozen faces who knows a great deal about trick photography.

Unlike "And Now for Something Completely Different," which was a collection of sketches from "Monty Python's Flying Circus," television show, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is what is known on Broadway as a "book show."

It has a story with an approximate beginning, an approximate middle and it ends, or perhaps I should say that it stops after a while. To be more specific, it's the Python troupe's version of the legend of King Arthur and the search for the holy grail, with no apologies at all to Malory though it manages to send up the legend, courtly love, fidelity, bravery, costume movies, movie violence and ornithology.

Graham Chapman plays Arthur, the film's major continuing character, with the earnest optimism of a 19th-century missionary, who's doomed to fail but refuses to acknowledge the fact. The other members of the Python team turn up in a variety of roles—Round Table knights, snobbish French aristocrats, irritable serfs, mythical monsters and, in one case, as a noble son named Alice who tries to turn the film into an operetta.

The gags are nonstop, occasionally inspired and should not be divulged, though it's not giving away too much to say that I particularly liked a sequence in which the knights, to gain access to an enemy castle, come up with the idea of building a Trojan rabbit....

[patent]

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