Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Members
Stats
  • Total Posts: 5,559,182
  • Total Topics: 106,348
  • Online Today: 719
  • Online Ever: 3,311
  • (July 08, 2021, 03:14:41 AM)
Users Online
Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 05:10:00 AM

Login with username, password and session length

The Life of Brian is 40 years old...

Started by kalowski, April 16, 2019, 10:22:33 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

shh

I was reminded of this a while ago when reading Geza Vermes's Christian Beginnings - 'Christianity' as such had diverged from the historical Jesus only a few decades after his death (shoe, holy gourd of Jerusalem...). Now I think of it, surely Will Self's 'Book of Dave' refers to this film?

It stands up so well given both the mode and the object of its satire are ancient history themselves (the Biblical epic and 70s British left-wing politics). Bit like Wlide with the Victorian melodrama.

Narratively, it comes together so much better than Grail, I remember watching as a child and having a genuine sense of dread as the inevitability of the crucifixion ratchets up ('oh my God, Brian Cohen is going to die!' I'm sure I said to myself). Also, I still wonder what they have lumps of round the back.

petril

Quote from: Virgo76 on April 18, 2019, 06:39:18 AM
Actually, it's not. It has moments of brilliance - Godfather III doesn't. But who are we trying to fool? It's obviously not the best one.

but that's just me

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Virgo76 on April 18, 2019, 06:39:18 AM
John Cleese doesn't even like it.

John Cleese would probably argue that Fawlty Towers was total dogshit if you caught him on a particularly cantankerous day.

St_Eddie


Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on April 19, 2019, 12:55:37 AM
John Cleese would probably argue that Fawlty Towers was total dogshit if you caught him on a particularly cantankerous day.

I believe he permanently went off the parrot sketch, because of the constant overkill with it being repeated and referred-to, and I agree with him on that.

bgmnts

I love so much of their oeuvre as any right minded fan of comedy but Life of Brian is by far their best work, by a long, long way. It's pretty much perfect to me as a comedy film.

olliebean

Quote from: Phoenix Lazarus on April 20, 2019, 07:23:09 PM
I believe he permanently went off the parrot sketch, because of the constant overkill with it being repeated and referred-to, and I agree with him on that.

Aside from things he never liked in the first place, is there anything left that John Cleese hasn't gone off?

sponk

Quote from: Virgo76 on April 18, 2019, 06:39:18 AM
Swearing doesn't bother me that much. I've never really noticed it in Life of Brian.
It's still the best film.
I agree about the Milligan cameo though.
I'm sure I heard one Python describe it as "marvelous" in an interview.
It isn't. It's crap. Presumably because Milligan - annoyed at having his holiday in Tunisia interrupted - walked off set before his part was finished (I believe?)
It's only a few seconds though and hardly spoils what is the Pythons' finest hour.

I wonder if it was deliberate trolling from the Python's, getting your comedic hero in your film for a shitty, 5 second cameo seems pretty anarchic and postmodern. I remember the South Park guys bragging about doing this with celebrities in their show. They got George Clooney and gave him the part of a dog, IIRC.

I think I was too young - 15 - when I first saw it and would have had a greater admiration for it if I had first watched it at 25 or 30.

I still think the nudity in the opening minutes is unfortunate because it becomes an excuse to dismiss the rest of the film, as above.

Idle overacts somewhat in the haggling scene and sometimes it does seem to be just having a laugh at some archetypes. The Cleese scenes are the best  - stoning and grammar on the grafitti.

But I need to watch it again on a quiet day with no distractions.

Regarding Holy Grail, the Black Knight scene is better than anything in Brian, and darker.

kalowski

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on April 21, 2019, 04:05:01 PM
I think I was too young - 15 - when I first saw it and would have had a greater admiration for it if I had first watched it at 25 or 30.

I still think the nudity in the opening minutes is unfortunate because it becomes an excuse to dismiss the rest of the film, as above.

Idle overacts somewhat in the haggling scene and sometimes it does seem to be just having a laugh at some archetypes. The Cleese scenes are the best  - stoning and grammar on the grafitti.

But I need to watch it again on a quiet day with no distractions.

Regarding Holy Grail, the Black Knight scene is better than anything in Brian, and darker.
I don't remember the nudity in the opening scenes? I remember the brilliant joke
"He is the Messiah, King of the Jews."
"And that's Capricorn, is it?"
"No. Just him."

petril

it's a warm, sunny, bright Sunday night, which feels like the perfect time to watch this. There always seemed to be something Swords & Sandals-y looking on these sorts of Sunday nights when I was young. Nostalgic compression ahoy

St_Eddie

Quote from: petrilTanaka on April 21, 2019, 07:57:17 PM
it's a warm, sunny, bright Sunday night, which feels like the perfect time to watch this. There always seemed to be something Swords & Sandals-y looking on these sorts of Sunday nights when I was young. Nostalgic compression ahoy

*buzz*... repetition.

Quote from: petrilTanaka on April 17, 2019, 09:37:35 PM
it feels very, very Summer Sunday Night to me. but then, that seemed to be a lot of summer Sundays for about 12 years from the late 80s onward, swords, sandals and ancient times. I feel weird watching it when it's not that kind of night

neveragain

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on April 21, 2019, 04:05:01 PM
Regarding Holy Grail, the Black Knight scene is better than anything in Brian, and darker.

Multitudes of people being crucified for no reason is much darker than one silly blole getting his limbs removed.

Edit: "blole", just want to point that out. Blole.

petril

Quote from: St_Eddie on April 21, 2019, 08:35:59 PM
*buzz*... repetition.

for me/repetition/cheap excuses/small village largely dependent on the sheep farming industry/stealing material/etc

Revelator

Quote from: Virgo76 on April 18, 2019, 06:39:18 AM
Actually, it's not. It has moments of brilliance - Godfather III doesn't. But who are we trying to fool? It's obviously not the best one.
John Cleese doesn't even like it.

George Perry's Python book reports that two members of the group thought MOL was their strongest film (he didn't say which two).
Cleese also knocked the third series of the Flying Circus, which might just be its best. I think it's enough for an artist to produce a work--I don't need their advice on how to rank it. Brian is certainly Python's best film by conventional standards of narrative construction, characterization, etc. but MOL and Grail contain more of the essence of Python's humor. In any case I'm glad for the variety among the films.

Quote from: sponk on April 20, 2019, 10:28:45 PM
I wonder if it was deliberate trolling from the Python's, getting your comedic hero in your film for a shitty, 5 second cameo seems pretty anarchic and postmodern.

I doubt it. Unknown to the Pythons, Milligan happened to be on holiday in the Tunisia, and when they found out they hastily arranged a cameo.

JCR

Was said on the Kermode and Mayo radio 5 show last week that they intended Milligan to be there for a full day but for unknown reasons he left at lunch meaning his cameo was far shorter than intended.

DrGreggles

I think it works perfectly without any close-ups though, which was apparently what they were going to shoot later in the day.
You don't even notice Spike to start with, which adds to it as well.
And it's a superb walk off at the end.

neveragain

Quote from: Revelator on April 23, 2019, 05:57:06 PM
Cleese also knocked the third series of the Flying Circus, which might just be its best.

Third is excellent to begin with but tails off. Second's where it's at.

Autopsy Turvey

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on April 21, 2019, 04:05:01 PM
I think I was too young - 15 - when I first saw it

Same here, only I wasn't too young!

Quoteand would have had a greater admiration for it if I had first watched it at 25 or 30.

Different, perhaps. I certainly always thought Grail was my favourite, because it's so much looser, sillier, and like a medieval Cycling Tour - the Flying Circus remains for me the pinnacle of Pythonic achievement. But Brian transcends Python in a way, being much more pointed, accessible and linear and having an actual sort of clear moral message.

QuoteI still think the nudity in the opening minutes is unfortunate because it becomes an excuse to dismiss the rest of the film, as above.

Who dismisses films on the grounds of nudity?! I don't think it's gratuitous, we see Brian in a very intimate moment, it makes sense that he's nude, and that he wasn't expecting a crowd of people outside his window. The surprise is compounded and the laugh heightened by Chapman's unexpected genitals.

QuoteRegarding Holy Grail, the Black Knight scene is better than anything in Brian, and darker.

Can't agree with this! The utter desolation of Brian on the cross, after all his friends and family have abandoned him to his horrific fate, is way more brutal than painless cartoonish limb-lopping.

Also, the inconsequential briefness of the Milligan cameo is perfect. He was the closest thing Python had to a 'comic messiah', and here he is being ignored by a crowd of people desperate to spot a messiah. And because this film is about tearing down your idols, it's important that they give him no glory, attention or consequence.

Quote from: neveragain on April 23, 2019, 06:43:00 PM
Third is excellent to begin with but tails off. Second's where it's at.

I think it just got harder for them to keep subverting expectations, iconoclasm had become a formula and tropes were being repeated, but there is a shitload of shit-hot shit in the last third of Series 3. All of Dickie Attenborough's lines for a start:

Quote"There can be no finer honour than to welcome into our midst tonight a guest who has not only done only more than not anyone for our Society, but nonetheless has only done more."

"Sadly, David Niven cannot be with us tonight, but he has sent his fridge. This is the fridge in which David keeps most of his milk, butter and eggs. What a typically selfless gesture, that he should send this fridge, of all his fridges, to be with us tonight."
(Fridge: "The nominations for the best Foreign Film Director are: Monsieur Richad Attenborough, Ricardo de Attenbergie, Rik Artenburg, Ri Char Dat En Bollo...")

"Well, there we are, another year has been too soon alas ended, and I think none more than myself can be happier at this time than I ... am."

Quote from: Autopsy Turvey on April 23, 2019, 07:21:29 PM
The utter desolation of Brian on the cross, after all his friends and family have abandoned him to his horrific fate, is way more brutal than painless cartoonish limb-lopping.



I only remember sitcom-type lugubrious dolefulness, not realistic anguish.

neveragain

It's the image and the idea more than anything else. Besides which, Brian does appear in genuine despair and anguish near the end but to focus too much on that would rob it of its comedy.

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: Autopsy Turvey on April 23, 2019, 07:21:29 PM

Also, the inconsequential briefness of the Milligan cameo is perfect. He was the closest thing Python had to a 'comic messiah', and here he is being ignored by a crowd of people desperate to spot a messiah. And because this film is about tearing down your idols, it's important that they give him no glory, attention or consequence.


I doubt that any of this entered into their minds at the time, but I do love this interpretation.

And I'll share your defense of the third MPFC series - it just keeps getting more layered in its surrealism (just try to find the grounding in reality that comedy's supposed to take off from in the "Mollusc Documentary," "Lake Pahoe" or "New Brain" sketches) and really only gets a little creaky in the stretch of episodes mutilated by BBC censorship/a certain person's alcoholism, and even they have more great stuff in them than many sketch shows manage in a series. And you forgot the best Dickie Attenborough line:

"Ladies and gentlemen, seldom can it have been a greater pleasure and privilege than it is for me now to announce that the next award gave me the great pleasure and privilege of asking a man without whose ceaseless energy and tireless skill the British Film Industry would be today."

Autopsy Turvey

There was a comedy benefit show circa 1989 where Fry & Laurie harangued John Cleese about not being funny anymore and not being able to sustain a marriage, until he breaks down and sobs. The Milligan cameo always struck me as a similar bit of audacity, young bucks feigning ironic disrespect for the old guard and biting the hands that fed them.

I wish they'd spun out the Dickie Attenborough character a bit more! I'm a sucker for those speech patterns. I once wrote an essay called 'Spatio-temporal Disruption in MPFC Series 3', possibly just to get more use out of a jotter. It happens all over Python of course, but S3 is heaving with it: the terrifying Lifeboat House, Njorl trotting into North Malden, literary characters building motorways, and the way that Sir Philip Sidney unfolds out of the Tudor Job Agency is just mind-boggling. My love of this 'trope' may be why initially my favourite bit in Brian was when he gets caught by space aliens.

neveragain

Despite my announced preference for s2, I do love all of the brilliant bits you've just mentioned. Dickie, particularly. But then you've got episodes like 'Book At Bedtime' which, even with the missing sketches reinstated, are sparse with the laughs.

sponk

In 2000 years will there be a film with Jews singing in gas chambers?

neveragain


Quote from: neveragain on April 23, 2019, 10:22:37 PM
What point would that be making?

Something about people's gullibility in seeking a false messiah?

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: sponk on April 23, 2019, 10:21:37 PM
In 2000 years will there be a film with Jews singing in gas chambers?

I believe The Day the Clown Cried made it more than halfway there.

Shaky

Quote from: Revelator on April 23, 2019, 05:57:06 PM
George Perry's Python book reports that two members of the group thought MOL was their strongest film (he didn't say which two).

I'm guessing Idle and Jonesy. Palin, Cleese & Gilliam have all complained about the film's structure over the years (while praising certain parts), and not sure what Chapman's thoughts were.

Blumf

Quote from: sponk on April 23, 2019, 10:21:37 PM
In 2000 years will there be a film with Jews singing in gas chambers?

Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I made light of the Spanish Inquisition, including it's torture of Jews. Only 500 years.

Answers your question, and relevant to Monty Python.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnF1OtP2Svk