"Monty Python" makes it clear that the highlight will always be the joke, the laughter.

Rating: 8/10 (18 June 2017)

The philosopher Henri Bergson devoted much of his studies on comedy, as we can see in his book (TEST ON THE MEANING OF THE COMIC). In this work, which breaks down the foundation of laughter, Bergson points to an idea in which the English comedy group "Monty Python" uses it almost as a thesis, in the case: Laughter is the mechanics applied to the living being.
In "Monty Python & the Holy Grail" (1975), we have all the distribution of a mechanics applied subtly, without toadyism's or presented in a mandatory way in order to provoke the amusement of the public, although it is a comedy, it is not performed Openly as conventionally other films of the genre are proposed, something that can be verified in the film "The Meaning of Life", later work of that same group, that uses of "sketches", something simplistic and shallow in the construction of conceited, mainly if we consider The complexity of the comic effect employed in a feature film with focal and linear history.
The comedy whose main satire focus is on the legend of King Arthur, is a work written and performed by the group Monty Python and which was directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones. The satire employed expands its limits by showing a king on a sacred mission, and who, because he is a believer of his condition, provokes laughter by having this severity interrupted by riding on an imaginary animal which exists only through the beating of a coconut, A sound effect entrusted to his helper Patsy (Terry Gilliam), the sonority is enough for King Arthur of the Bretons (Graham Chapman) to believe to possess a horse that accompanies him through the English lands. This effect not only of the sound, but of a king almost in the mold of the Danish tale "The new clothes of the king", where a noble parades naked, but believing to dress a beautiful clothes, therefore, his tailor told him, in King Arthur's crazy, imaginative stance added to the sound of the coconuts will be calculations resulting from a recurring mechanical summation in the film, something Bergson identifies as the mechanics of repetition for laughter.
"Repeat, a combination of circumstances repeated exactly on several occasions, in stark contrast to the changing course of life - the more comic the repetition (or coincidence) the more complex the repeated scene is and the more natural it is represented (two Conditions - complexity and naturalness that seem to be excluded, and which the ability of the theatrical author should reconcile) ". Bergson, 1900.
The highlight of this characteristic repetition in "Monty Python & the Holy Grail" is the sophistication in which it is built, and in the moments when it is inserted, therefore, it is something that runs the risk of being tiring or beaten but that in the movie exercises A charm to the point of wanting more. The same effect occurs in all circumstances in which King Arthur and his companions attempt to invade castles, but never succeed. Since the attempts, these different, always fail, even when they prove to be an excellent idea, as in the attempt to mold the Trojan horse, which in the film is replaced by a large wooden rabbit handed over to the French.
An interesting division made to know each of the Knights of the Round Table in detail is a break with the Brecht theatrical model, a break with the fictional narrative, presenting a historian (current to the period in which the work was performed), and Of a television program, explains or tries to explain what happened to the knights, but a tragicomic outcome is given to the teacher, this unused break for free, gains permanent prominence as we feed back the plot of the film, evoking moments of Laughs through the repetition of interruptions of medieval history by a modern police investigation.
Direction and photography make primary recording slips, in some scenes, for example, there is lens blur, and the use of open planes can not always communicate the size of what one wants to reveal, perhaps this occurs for a budget limit , Since many of the plains scenes are flattened in medium planes that do not account for registering castles and settlements (something that needs investments for construction), already in the dark scenes or of mists, the use of close's, big close's and open plans , Rather than assisting in any dialogue, only complicates and diminishes the intended comic effect.
It is worth mentioning that the moments of insertion of the animations are all very well inserted, besides the impeccable art that collaborates and helps in the construction of a comic proposal, and even being drawings inserted in a human history, are used naturally. As Bergson explains, this occurs when a certain comic effect derives from a certain cause, the more natural we are to judge, the greater the comic effect will seem to us: we already laugh at the deviation which appears to us as a simple fact. More risible will be the deviation that we see arise and increase before us, whose origin we know and whose history we can reconstitute. The cause of the insertion of these drawings into the film are always the results of a world and a divine order, which leave the terrestrial plane and present themselves as the world of the human extra-plane, and are recorded just like the illustrations of the catholic church in the middle ages , However, without the seriousness of the trait of the church, but always of the comic trait.