“Monty Python’s The Life of Brian,” a movie full of laughter caused by satire and quirky acting is one that will not be easily forgotten by those who watch it. Even though it was a movie that was released in 1979, it is a movie that still gets publicity today. The reason for this publicity or as some would say “notoriety” is because the movie was banned in a number of countries when it first came out because the Catholic Church had deemed the movie inappropriate and ridiculed the contents of the New Testament of the Bible and the beliefs of the Catholic Church.
The movie takes place during the time of Christ, in fact, Brian was born on the same night, and town as that of Jesus. For this the Three Wise Men mistakenly believed Brian to be the Messiah. They soon realized their mistake, but from then on in Brian’s life, he was often mistaken for being the Messiah. The reasons for this false believe was because the entire town had become Messiah-seeking drones that after having heard the presence of a Messiah were looking anywhere to find him. Brian being from a town where many false profits began popping up literally right next to each other and Brian finds himself falling in with the lot of them.
The movie takes on a typical Monty Python theme and style of having the same seven or eight actors playing all the different parts of the movie. This also includes satirical humor and poking fun at issues such as Roman Culture, religious issues that were controversial at the time, as well as political process and rebellions. It has been raved as one of the best of Monty Python’s films, but in my opinion, I still think The Holy Grail is better. This is probably because it was the first one of the Monty Python Movies that I had seen and so it seemed more original in the idea of film to me and it is simply a very easy movie to quote and it makes it very memorable, however, Life of Brian has a certain theme to it that makes it memorable and I can see why so many would enjoy it more. This theme being that it is based on the unknown story following just alongside that of Jesus. Many that either do not believe or are skeptical might find this funny simply because it is consistently making fun of how eager people can be to believe in something and follow something that is simply a mistaken identity or coincidence. For instance there was a scene in which people were claiming that Brian was the Messiah and no matter what Brian said, they would bend his words into a manner that would make him fit into their believes because they were just so naive and would believe in anything.
You can now see why the Catholic church would be so keen to ban this type of movie. However, this banning of the movie simply brought it more publicity and if nothing else made it more desirable for more and more people to want to go and see it. The extra publicity boosted its’ popularity and helped in its own advertising. They had posters such as ones that said “SO Funny it was banned in Norway!” Movies like this that are meant to just poke fun and make people laugh can often be over exaggerated by many and become even more of a novelty but to understand it, you really just need to watch it for yourself!! I highly recommend it, it is hilarious!
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