"The anarchic comedy"

Rating: 9/10 (19 August 2015)

The film is a good demonstration of how masses can be easily manipulated; a red highlight to man's pride and desire of controlling all; a call to open our eyes on our blind walk, guided by blind leaders; a shout for attention to life's undervaluation and an echo that whispers the castration of men's true wills All those issues are projected in the film, although there's no shedding of tears Monty Python And The Holy Grail shows us how to deal well with the sad facts of life: Having a big laugh at it all! The film is a 1975 British comedy, written and performed by the sarcastic group Monty Python, and directed by two of its members, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones. It draws a satire on power and parodies King Arthur and The Knights of The Round Table legend. The satire starts from the chosen legend itself and as its name suggests, the table has no head, evincing that everyone who sits there has equal status. Although in the film, King Arthur goes dictating orders and affirming his position to everyone. The movie imposes a cynical tone from the initial title of credits, until the last minute of it. Monty Python And The Holy Grail starts with King Arthur, riding an imaginary horse, accompanied by his squire, who bangs two pieces of coconut in Nordic lands, making the sound of a horse ride. Arthur recruits his knights of the round table, including, Sir Bedevere The Wise, Sir Lancelot The Brave, Sir Robin The Not-Quite-So-Brave-As- Lancelot and Sir Galahad the Pure, together they go on the quest for the Holy Grail. They build a "Trojan Rabbit" and try to sneak into a French castle, but they forget to hide into the rabbit and fail. Arthur then decides the group should separate to seek the grail. Their separated journeys are totally absurd, plenty of strange creatures and ridiculous obstacles. The plot is gag's restless but we never get enough, one turn overcomes the other, with a really smart and anti-classical style. The English humour travels from the banal weather issue to the monarch state, although the way it's played provokes universal laughter. The script has a "classic" anti-structure, a style emerged in Europe after the WWII. It's got incoherent realities, extravagance and exaggeration, obviation of formal principles to ridicule the issues and express with clarity revolutionary ambitions. The narrative is constructed by random, fragmented and chaotic events, full of coincidences, starred by characters deliberately incoherent and usually symbolic, and it also has clear influences of Expressionism, Dadaism and the Theatre of The Absurd. In Monty Python And The Holy Grail, we see characters talking to the camera and also referring to other characters not by their names, but by the scene they played ("There is the old man from scene 24"); actors comment about their acting in the middle of the film; an intermission is called right when King Arthur is crossing The Death Bridge; the medieval age plot is absurdly connected to the 70's sub-plot; but in the end, it all contributes to create an absurd and chaotic situation which goes totally coherent with the film's main target: the incoherent way we live. Monty Python And The Holy Grail doesn't end, it simply stops!