Marking its 45th anniversary this year, Monty Python’sLife of Brianserves as a jumping-off point for countless artistic and religious debates. Movies with religious themes tend to go one of two ways for filmmakers. you’re able to either go with the safe option and treat your story with kid gloves, retelling dull, sanctioned hagiography. Or you can takethe Martin Scorsese angle, and retell an old tale for a new age, inevitably riling up controversy.
Those viewing it today, unaware of the firestorm of self-righteousness that surrounded its debut in 1979, would be none the wiser.Life of Brianbears all the hallmarks of Monty Python’s other tongue-in-cheek films. Sparked by an off-the-cuff joke, the concept soon morphedinto a tax scamwith a little slapstick, aliens, cross-dressing, and some obscure Biblical history tossed in for good measure. How do you make an intertextual exploration of the meaning of faith funny? A better question would be why, but Monty Python was never a group to play by the rules. The fact this movie made twenty million dollars, regardless of being barred by several nations, is the least of the movie’s accomplishments.
The Origin of Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
As the legend goes, a reporter inquired about the subject of Python’s upcoming film after releasing their first feature-length film. They didn’t have one, so they laughed, and said “Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.” The joke snowballed, and a script forLife of Brianwas assembled on a group vacation in mid-1977.Terry Jones was selected as director, with a small segment set to be directed by Terry Gilliam. The film began to take shape, with Graham Chapman playing the title role of Brian of Nazareth. John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin completed the full Python cast.
A modest production, the independent comedy drew parallels between the foibles of ancient and modern society, the film highlighting the illusion of freedom of speech, the tyranny of moral authorities, and tabooconcerning anything religion. Moving onward from theirfirst film,Monty Python and the Holy Grail— a film so hamstrung by budgetary concerns the finale had to be rewritten to account for the shortfall — the troupe once again ventured blindly into their next film. As iconic asMonty Python’s filmsare today, they were only possible by the “generosity” of scheming rock stars cheating income-tax laws.
Harboring a grudge against the UK tax code so extreme he wrote a song about it, now-solo Beatle George Harrison decided he wanted to make it rain too. He fueled the production with enough to get it off the ground, though the film had absolutely no logical chance of succeeding, doomed to be an expensive labor of love. As a fringe benefit, the Beatle got a bit part as an extra, his shaggy beard coming in handy playing a first-century Galilean peasant, mortgaging his house for a then-unfathomable five million dollars out of morbid curiosity. Poking fun at themselves, the end song suggested viewers buy the soundtrack, Monty Python expecting the film would bomb horribly.
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Why Was Life of Brian Controversial?
The film debuted to jeers, an X-rating, and bans across Europe. The greatest point of contention in the controversy centered on the film supposedly mocking the sacrifice and gravity of the resurrection, our dying title character serenaded by the song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” It’s a far cry from the simple, stale, reverent depictions of history found inBen HurorThe Greatest Story Ever Told.
In contrast with those traditional religious epics, Python would make their magnum opus winking at the camera. Brian is not a heroic martyr. He’s a bungling, second-rate messiah, the wrong man in the wrong place at the right time. Any similarities to Jesus are coincidental. It’s not plausible deniability to allow Monty Python to deride Jesus, it’s the joke. EditorJulian Doyle later wrotethat the crucifixion scene owed more to the final sacrificial act in the Stanley Kubrick film than anything in the Bible. “We are much more disrespectful to the memory of Spartacus than Jesus here,” he later wrote.
That interview was a huge turning point: it helped break the assumption that religion was something the establishment told people how to talk about.
Michael Palin noted to The Guardian in 2019, that the best thing that ever happened was the debate with finger-wagging theologians and journalists, singling out one particular head-to-head debate on British network TV. “That interview was a huge turning point: it helped break the assumption that religion was something the establishment told people how to talk about.” Frequently, the TV debate devolved into petty squabbles, wobbly logic, and grandstanding. The crux of the film (no pun intended) was the need to think and act critically for yourself, an idea that many nay-sayers had no intent on engaging with — probably because they hadn’t seen the movie.
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Present Day Re-Assessments of Brian
It is now widely acknowledged by theologians and historians, that the Gospel writers themselves perceived and framed Jesus very differently, depending on their motivations and their desired audiences. WhatLife of Briannails that so many films skirt, is that the early Christians had no consensus on Jesus’s teachings, nor the meaning of his life and death. Ashistorians are quick to note, “The gospels are not biographies in the modern sense of the word.” The in-fighting of the Jewish sects in the film serves as a parody of contemporary politics but also demonstrates a very firm grasp of the ancient political climate.
The film is at its sharpest when it ignores Jesus and Christianity entirely, turning the microscope on believers rather than any particular religious tenet. Commiserating with Jesus (Mark 4: 10-12 and Luke 8: 9-10, NIV), Python demonstrates how Brian struggles to communicate with his followers, only hearing what they want to hear; religious zealots, their own worst enemies. Whereas Jesus used parables of mustard seeds and camels squeezing through needles, Brian cannot convince his followers he is not a messiah no matter what he says.
To make a film about false messiahs is hardly anti-Christian nor insulting to history because it is history. Astheologian Bart Ehrman explains, “The parody, in other words, has a solid historical basis…” The film makes it clear that Brian is not equal to or analogous to the Christian figure at all, but rather a pale imitation.
Inevitably, as the shock wore off, many critics of the film and some Christians have re-interpreted the movie, the topic discussed at length at a King’s College symposium in 2014. Free from the noise of the blasphemy debate, modern viewers pick up on some subtle yet significant readings ignored by the vast majority of the audience and pearl-clutchers, each seeing something different. Humor is subjective, but the discourse that the film left behind is still worth pondering today. John Cleese stated that the film was designed to make people think. Judging only by that one criterion, it wildly succeeded.
