47. Life of Brian (1979)

by Jaime Grijalba.

‘Yeah, a proud Christian would definitely do Life of Brian justice* (* denotes sarcasm)’ - an email sent to the organizators and writers of this countdown after I said I would take on ‘Life of Brian’ for this comedy countdown.

Now, while that statement is completely moronic in the sense that anyone can read it and sense just how wrong the whole thought process is flawed, every word is a testament of a person with forced stereotipes and all-assuming characteristics regarding people they don’t even know! Only people that don’t know me would call me ‘a proud Christian’ (specially since the sarcasm wasn’t regarding that, but about how you can make this movie’s justice being ‘a proud Christian’), since when while I’ve told many that I do believe in a superior force, let’s call it God, and in its incarnation on Earth, let’s call it Jesus, that doesn’t mean that I obey every rule in the good book, neither does it mean that I’ve actually read it, nor that I find myself with conservative ways of thinking towards society and how it should be (if any, I believe that most of the time, the teachings of Jesus were closer to communism more than anything else), but rather the contrary, always fighting for equality between all people on Earth, different social classes, gender, sexual preferences, races, even if they believe in a God or not. And while the film is a favorite of many, my views and personal expressions towards the morality and the issue about equanimity in every sense possible inside this universe in which we live, I must say that this film offends me deeply and emotionally, and I can’t watch it for more than 44 minutes at how disgusted I am towards the whole stance that the film makes. It’s an aberration and if you like it, you should be ashamed of yourself!
After the success of the first film made by the Monty Python troupe (Terry Jones, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin), ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, they decided to shit all over their legacy and release this abomination towards the respect of any living creature alive in this universe, it should be condemned, and while I know that this film had its controversy, I think it didn’t go far enough, and it also never reached the most important part of the whole deep issue regarding how offensive and badly thought this movie was. The film tells the story of Brian, a young boy that is born within the same neighborhood as baby Jesus, even being confused by the Three Wise Men as the Messiah itself (something that would become the motion of the second half of the film about how everyone thinks that he is the messiah, ending up in the similar predicaments in which Jesus finds himself into the last days of his life). While the prologue is really funny, showing us the character of the mother and the mixture of comedy that they are going to use all the way through: slapstick, word play, wronged characters, funny voices, deep philosophical quandaries that end up being solved with a bump in the head. Cue the title cards and the best Bond song that was never a Bond song, a song that could only battle ‘Snake Eater’ in those made in the fashion of classic James Bond songs that could actually make good James Bond films (now, how they can fit a ‘Brian’ in a James Bond tale is easy, but the whole thing about he being a normal boy but being naughty… that is more difficult, maybe he is a villain and he’s been very naughty because he stole some nukes, and when Bond finally confronts him, he finds out that Brian all this time was a little 5 year-old boy that was mind controlling hordes and hordes of henchmen, so there you justify the song into the plot and the whole ‘naughty’ stuff; now, regarding ‘Snake Eater’, maybe someone else can do that synopsis).

Damn, two nice things to say about the film already, I guess I’m not good at this whole condemnation thing, but whatever, the offensive parts are about to come and they are quite shocking so anyone can read along and nod with me as we discover the worst part of the most famous, humorous and iconic actors that have come from british television. We cut to Jesus himself, speeching, the distance between him and Brian and his mother is sufficient so that we don’t actually hear what he is saying, except for the mis-hears that a woman near them shouts back. It is the height of the popularity of what we would know as the Son of God, and so is Brian, with the same 33 years old, sad and bitter about how he is still living and depending on his mother, and specially worried about how he doesn’t find a girl for him to sleep with (after all, sex, sex, sex, is all they think about). In the midst of his discovery that he is, in fact, not a Jew, but actually, the son of a Roman, he finds a job as a food seller inside the colisseum. There he meets a group: The People’s Front of Judea, and please… don’t ever mention Judea’s People’s Front, fucking splitters. The group fosters him as he hates romans ‘a lot’ and there he goes to write a bunch of graffiti about how romans should go home, it is one of the funniest moments where a roman centurion corrects his latin scribblings, and even if I don’t know a word of this dead language, I still get a kick out of it, specially when we start to think about what is the obsession with this particular centurion with grammar, ortography and verb conugation, even replicating the punishments suffered by these actors during school as they had their own latin classes. The funniest part is how the same centurion goes after him when he finally reads the correct graffiti… or maybe, it’s a different centurion, but the fact that John Clesse plays both makes it funnier.

I must say that the persecutions that ensue remind me of the moment that I found most offensive of the whole film, but I shall not get ahead of myself and continue. He gets congratulations from the PFoJ for his bravery and making a escape safely. There he is met with a new plan: kidnap Pilate’s wife and then make him respond to their demands. Bad luck for Brian that finds himself again in the middle of controversy as another group of terrorist actually had the same idea and are fighting about it… to have a short story, Brian gets caught and thrown into a cell, oh, how lucky, bloody romans, great people, crucifiction is surely their best invention and historical legacy to the humankind… really, why do you think that so many people use it nowadays? Anyway, the thing is that he is brought in front of Pontius Pilate (as the famous prayer says) to find the most ridiculous impression of an historical figure ever done by Michael Palin: a people that needs to talk in public and order centurions and officials… that can’t pronounce the letter ‘r’ correctly, always pronouncing it as a ‘w’, giving us the Elmer Fudd of history, a cartoonish exercise of laugh riot after another, no doubt the best character in the whole film is this ridiculed historical figure that can manage to make extras that weren’t supposed to laugh… laugh histerically, or so the story tells… or the history, who knows by this point? Maybe when he started talking with Jesus and said that he couldn’t do nothing, he started saying something like, don’t know, ‘nice beawd, is it new or you bought it for 16 sheckles?’. Even if Brian says that his father was a woman… I mean, a roman, he can’t escape fate until he tells the name of his own roman father: Naughtius Maximus’, he starts remembering about his old friend ‘Biggus Dickus’ and his wife ‘Incontinentia Buttocks’, everyone falls to the floor laughing, so Brian seizes the opportunity and, once again, runs away.

Now, nothing prepared me for this, it is time and wisdom that has brought me at peace to my reflections and point of view regarding my moral quandaries and propositions, my political views and dreams of equality all across the board. But then, this movie fails miserably, insulting me to my deep core to the events that follow, making me sick with anger and frustration on how they can make such a big mistake after all the many funny moments, lines and discussions about how the gags presented so far work. They had to blew it all up with this: Brian escapes, he runs up stairs that actually just make him fall outside a building, and as he is falling, a spaceship goes through and catches him… all is good and dandy until we see the actual aliens on screen… I, as a Regulian from the 13th Distreect of the Planet Zerbooks, I find the depiction of my people in this film to be completely racist and offensive in every way possible. It is also offensive that they did not approach at any moment to any of the many active members of our species that are living in this nice Earth of yours, and you had to resort to goofy puppetry that exagerates our eyeballs and mouths that would even make a blackface blush. Shame on anyone who thinks that this movie is any good, its been a thorn in the heart of my race since 1985 (it takes a few light years for us to get it there), if we had ever known that this had a controversy, we would’ve joined it and took this awful, resentful and offensive movie out of existence.

All these people who voted for it should be ashamed of themselves.

End of Communication.
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How Life of Brian made the Top 100:

#4 Pedro Silva

 #7 Samuel Wilson

 #15 David Schleicher

 #19 James Uhler

 #21 Steven Mullen (Weeping Sam)

 #39 R.D. Finch

 #41 Bobby McCartney

 #41 John Greco

 #42 Jaime Grijalba

 #46 Bobby Jopsson

 #53 Mark Smith

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