A TV film, but feature-length nonetheless, this dramatisation of the release of Monty Python’s Life of Brian was uneven and often didn’t pull off what it attempted, as well as being very heavy-handed at the end, but it was charming, entertaining and had some extraordinary performances that may well take some minor actors from comedy shows and make them big names on UK television.
Focusing on the two Pythons who appeared on the famous debate on Friday Night, Saturday Morning, John Cleese and Michael Palin, it follows their lives as they return to London after finishing the filming to a storm of controversy, finding that they will have difficulty getting distributed, that people are vilifying them as individuals, and that it is even affecting their families. This leads to their decision to go on the television show.
But two things make it something different from an average dramatisation – the first is the ‘Pythonesque’ (or ‘sub-Python self-referential bullshit’ as they put it) presentation, while the second is the way the characters were performed. The former largely worked well, with surreal moments and clever asides, but was also hit-and-miss and responsible for the overall uneven tone – for example, it was a stroke of genius to have the Terry Jones actor double as Michael Palin’s wife and Gilliam’s miniature animations were neatly done, but the exaggerated behind-the-scenes BBC meetings were strained and overlong and the way they shoehorned in humour based on speech impediments and male nudity just to mirror the similar (much better) moments in Life of Brian fell flat and really weren’t needed. I didn’t like the flash forwards or knowing references to present-day attitudes, either, and there were a few fart jokes too many – a certain French taunt amidst numerous nonsensical taunts aside, fart jokes weren’t really Python’s thing.
On the other hand, the decision to play the Pythons not as straight impersonations but exaggerated versions of their comic personas was brilliant. Thus it was not really a drama centred on Cleese and Palin so much as on Basil Fawlty and Nisus Wettus, which was excellent – and made me realise how absurdly good a sitcom based on exaggerated Pythons would be. That said, if less time had been given to unfunny Tourette’s character #248923 and irritating BBC ‘head of talk’ Alan Dick, the rest of the Pythons could have been more fleshed out – which would have been especially good as they were all acted so well. Sadly, we got an aloof Chapman going on about being gay every other line, a peripheral Gilliam largely escaping into fantasy, a Jones mostly defined by mispronouncing words and boring people with technical aspects of filmmaking and far worse than all besides, an Eric Idle so mercenary it really seemed like the writers had a vendetta against him, possibly just for putting together Spamalot.
The climax was very well-executed, if a little misleading. Friday Night, Saturday Morning was brilliantly recreated, with superbly nasty performances from the actors playing Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. The show paints the encounter as a scathing, petty attack on the film from two uninformed bullies – Palin leaves furious, feeling defeated, only to go home and be told he has ‘won’, because the religious men were so contemptible the watchers would feel they were not worth listening to. Meanwhile, back in the studio an ‘everyman’ who has until then been opposed to the film confronts the bishop and the satirist and tells them he did not feel they represented him at all, and quite the issue is made of them not having watched the first fifteen minutes of the film, and therefore not understanding it (based on Palin’s account of meeting with one Raymond Johnston).
It would be nice if it had been so pat and simple, but the fact is that it was not. Thankfully, the BBC showed the full episode afterwards (and put it on iPlayer) so that 2011’s audience could judge for themselves. What’s true is that the level of debate was very poor – Muggeridge keeps calling the film ‘tenth rate’ and the Bishop compares it not only with undergraduate comedy but with what the mentally handicapped might produce, and then puts in his famous ‘thirty pieces of silver’ jibe. In fact, the full interview shows Cleese much more eloquent, especially about opposing closed-mindedness and (implicitly) the Church’s discouragement of free thought, and the Bishop much more friendly and personable than he is largely remembered, complimenting the acting and making affectionate jokes. What they Pythons ought to have done is to undercut the playground jibes, emphasise that the subjective opinions and value judgements are no more than that and moot in terms of debate, point out that these men are not critics and hardly likely to share their opinions of film and humour with large percentages of the audience – the young in particular – and so their barbs have no meaning, and raise what the debate should have been about – ie censorship, what exactly is objectionable to the church in the film and whether those who are criticised are the blind followers who do not think for themselves, and why that is.
The Pythons didn’t manage to steer the debate well. So while the film is right in pointing out that the mudslinging and taunting makes the Christians look bad, I don’t feel the central point this film makes about that debate rings true.
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