Lenten Blog – Day 27– Christ on Film – “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (1979)

Moving on from the glowing Christ from the 1925 Ben-Hur film, we turn to “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.” There’s a particular reason why I’m discussing this film when it has Christ in it far less than even “Ben-Hur.”

Monty Python’s film is about Brian who was born “just down the street” from Jesus. Brian is a Jew who is just going about his day when all sorts of things happen and he gets drawn into the conflict between the Jews and the Romans. At a point in the film, Brian is looked at as a savior and suddenly he is put in the spotlight.

 

Brian

Is Jesus even in the film? Well, yes. He’s seen doing the Sermon on the Mount but his impact is clouded due to the fact that the people we’re focused on can’t hear what he’s saying. So when he says: “Blessed are the Peace Makers,” our party hears: “Blessed are the CHEESE makers.” Soon they determine that it means all people who deal in dairy products.

Jesus is way in the back there.

This film was met with quite a bit of controversy when it first came out as mocking Christ and his story. When the members of Monty Python were interviewed about the film they said that they actually set out to write a film about Jesus but they didn’t really find him very funny - so they switched paths.

Here’s my take. I don’t think the film is controversial in the sense that it mocks Christ or Christ’s story (since, again, Jesus is in one scene) - what it DOES mock are Jesus’ believers.

Brian's Followers

When Brian is suspected of being the messiah, he’s quickly chased around Jerusalem by hordes of people. More and more people follow him and when he loses a sandal the followers believe that they, too, are to go without sandals. When he drops his gourd, it suddenly becomes a “holy” gourd. The moment when he accidentally falls into a hole where a man has kept a vow of silence for many years and leaps out yelling at him, his followers believe that Brian had someone done a miracle. None of these acts mock Brian or Jesus but they do mock his followers and, I feel, that’s where people got a bit up-in-arms. It’s almost okay to mock Jesus but it’s not okay for a group of British comedians to make fun of ME!

The Holy Sandal.

As to why this is in my Lenten blog...let me ‘splain.

When I did the seminars at church about Christ in film, I brought up this film and the fact that it was one of the films that reminded me that the story of Christ was a political one. Christ going up against authority and turning people against the power structure in place.

At one point there are two, literally, underground groups battling against the Romans. “The Judean People’s Front” and the “People’s Front of Judea.” They end up arguing about who is going to do what. When I brought this up to my group, the priest said to me: “There’s more truth in this film than in most films about Christ.”

 v.

So there you have it. A silly British comedy has, possibly, more truth in it about the time Christ was walking the earth than some trumped up Hollywood films.

And it has full frontal male nudity.