He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy

Rating: 10/10 (3 January 2012)

To celebrate my 1000th review for IMDb, I turn to another favourite film. "Life of Brian", the third Monty Python film, follows the formula used with great success in the second, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", namely that of telling a story, loosely based upon historical fact or legend, though a series of sketches.
The title character is Brian Cohen, a young Judean living during the first century AD. He joins the People's Front of Judea, a small group fighting to free the country from Roman occupation. After a series of misadventures, Brian is mistaken for the Messiah by a crowd of followers and ends up being crucified. Brian is frequently confused with Jesus Christ; the two men were both born in stables in Bethlehem on the same day, and the film opens with the Magi mistakenly coming to offer their homage to Brian, before realising their error.
The film was hugely controversial when it came out in 1979, with numerous religious groups accusing the Pythons of irreverence; in a notorious television debate John Cleese and Michael Palin were forced to defend it against Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. These accusations had the predictable effect of increasing interest in the film, and thereby boosting cinema attendances, but they also highlighted a possible legal problem. Two years earlier, Britain's once-moribund blasphemy laws had been successfully revived by the anti-pornography campaigner Mary Whitehouse in a prosecution against the magazine "Gay News". Fear of a similar prosecution meant that the Pythons had to be careful not to be seen attacking Christ himself; it is always made clear that Brian and Jesus are two separate people and that it is the hapless Brian who is being lampooned. The nearest the film comes to criticising Christian doctrine is during the "Sermon on the Mount" scene where Christ's words are misheard or misunderstood by his listeners. ("Blessed are the cheesemakers" "Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products").
Nevertheless, the film does contain a good deal of religious satire, aimed at those forms of organised religion which are intolerant of opposing viewpoints or refuse to permit critical scrutiny of their own dogmas. This is shown in the early scene where an elderly man is about to be stoned for blasphemy, having said "that piece of fish was good enough for Jehovah", and more importantly in the scene where the crowd take Brian for the Messiah. This new religion only lasts for a short while, but during its brief existence it mimics some of the less admirable features of real-life religions, such as the tendency to split into competing, mutually hostile sects and the attribution of miraculous or mystical significance to the most mundane words and actions. The mob's faith is not shaken when Brian's divinity is denied not only by his own mother ("He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy") but even by Brian himself. ("Only the true Messiah denies his divinity!")
There is also a good deal of political satire in the film, much of it of a surprisingly conservative nature. The famous "What have the Romans ever done for us?" sketch, for example, can be seen as a vindication of British and European colonialism. The political left is parodied by the People's Front of Judea. This tiny organisation, whose lack of significance is equalled only by the self-importance of its members, ostensibly exists to campaign against the Roman occupiers, but expends most of its energies in ideological squabbles against other revolutionary groupuscules such as the Popular Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front. Its bureaucratic mentality means that it is incapable of taking any action without extensive debate and the passing of several motions.
Another target of the film's satire is Biblical epics like "The Greatest Story Ever Told" or Franco Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth", which generally took a reverential attitude to religion. (Shooting in Tunisia, the Pythons reused some of the sets from Zeffirelli's film). The final crucifixion scene contains an obvious reference to Kubrick's "Spartacus". ("I'm Brian and so's my wife!)" Cleese wanted to play Brian himself, but this role eventually went to Graham Chapman, leaving Cleese free to play his normal gallery of pompous authority-figures, including Reg, the leader of the PFJ, and the centurion who, after catching Brian painting the slogan "Romans Go Home!" in incorrect Latin ("Romanes eunt domus") forces him to paint the grammatically correct version "Romani ite domum" 100 times. There are also memorable contributions from the other Pythons, including Terry Jones (who also directed) as Brian's shrewish mother Mandy, Eric Idle in his normal wisecracking "Mr Cheeky" personality and Palin as the camp, lisping Pontius Pilate ("the little wascal has spiwit") and as the ineffectual public-schoolboy Roman officer Nisus Wettus. ("Crucifixion? Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each"). Idle's other great contribution to the film was to write the closing song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", which has since taken on a life of its own, being played at football matches, weddings and funerals, including Chapman's.
"Life of Brian" came out when I was a teenager, and as like most British teenagers of the period I was a huge Python fan I enjoyed it enormously. Since then I have watched it regularly, and every time I do I find something new to laugh at or some new subtlety I had not previously noticed. It is, in my view, the best of the Python films and the greatest British comedy of the seventies; it paved the way for the revival of British film-making in the eighties. Several of the greatest films of this revival were to be made by Handmade Films, the company set up by former Beatle (and Python fan) George Harrison to make "Life of Brian". 10/10