Comedy Masterpiece that Couldn't be Made Today

Rating: 9/10 (27 January 2020)

This was the very last VHS I ever got, and I've loved it ever since. In celebration of the recently late Terry Jones, we decided to revisit it, and honestly didn't even realise he directed it until the opening credits. It was also the perfect opportunity to educate my wife who had never seen it before, and I couldn't abide that. For those of you similarly uneducated on one of the greatest comedy movies of all time, Life of Brian follows a man born on the same day and next door to Jesus Christ. Thirty-three years later he discovers he has Roman ancestry, joins an anti-Roman movement, and gets mistaken for the Messiah. And not once does it take the piss out of Jesus.
Ironically enough considering the controversy, Life of Brian is a satire of blind faith and religion itself. Nothing encapsulates this better than when Brian loses his sandal while being chased by a group of rabid followers. The followers stop to consider the sandal and what Brian leaving it behind is meant to mean. There's disagreements as to the significance and the group of followers quickly splinter by their differing interpretations. When they finally catch up with Brian he tells them to go away, and the followers take it as profound wisdom to go away in a certain way in order to attain spiritual cleansing. When there's complaints of no food, Brian points out a bush of fruit a hundred yards away and it's instantly hailed as a miracle, and when the guy who's been using that bush to sustain him for eighteen years complains, he's branded a blasphemour. And this goes on throughout the movie, including the famous nude scene with such iconic gems as "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy" and "We are all individuals! I'm not."
The genius of Life of Brian is how multilayered the jokes are, and how relentless they become the deeper your understanding of them is. On the surface there's plenty of comedy to be found, from the slapstick (Brian falling on a preacher, pushing him into a large jar) to the surrealist (Brian being abducted by aliens). Then there's the wordplay with Pontius Pilate talking about his friend Biggus Dickus and his inability to pronounce Rs, and the splintered revolutionary factions battling it out in the Roman corridors. Dig deeper and there's the satirical look at religious followers I explained above. But then there's even more, such as the grammar-lesson in Latin, which I can imagine develops a whole new level of comedy for those who actually know a little bit of how Latin works. Even if you don't, the scene is brimming with other humour in the Roman soldiery taking the time to teach a Jew Latin grammar, and giving him school-age punishment of writing it out a hundred times.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Life of Brian could not be made today. For starters the controversy it garnered at the time would only be amplified in today's internet age of Twitter complainers. Movies today are so frightened of alienating particular audiences that even the most risquÃ© comedies have a line to draw. Not only that but we don't have George Harrison to mortgage his house in order to finance the movie any more. But even further, Life of Brian has not aged well. This is largely a good thing as it adds a dash of shock and becomes refreshing to watch today, but there are certain jokes and moments that would not land very well at all. The one that jumped out to me immediately is Eric Idle's blackface in the opening scene. Unlike Tropic Thunder, the blackface isn't treated as a joke, they just painted Idle's face black to turn him into a black wise man. Another one (again the subject of Eric Idle) is Stan wanting to be a woman called Loretta, and the response he receives from his friends is blatant transphobia. The film doesn't have particularly great treatment of women either. Of all the female characters in the movie, only three of them were played by actual women. The most obvious is Terry Jones as Brian's mother, but the stoning scene becomes unintentionally ironic when you realise it's a bunch of men pretending to be women pretending to be men. Nonetheless, it's to be expected from a comedy troupe comprised entirely of white men.
That aside, Life of Brian is a comedy masterpiece. The questionable acting doesn't matter, the repeated sets don't matter, the complete blindness to political correctness doesn't matter. All that matters is how hilarious it is, and Life of Brian is one of the absolute funniest. It doesn't matter how many times you rewatch it, there's always something new, another layer to the joke to appreciate, and the shallower jokes are so good and timeless that they're easily enjoyed for what they are over and over again. There's a reason Life of Brian is a landmark in pop culture, still quoted, referenced, and homaged today. It deserves nothing less than a 9/10.