In fact, my favourite song from the film is ”Every Sperm is sacred” which features a Catholic working class family struggling to manage their heaving household in Yorkshire. The Meaning of Life marks a point where comedy wasn’t afraid to cross the line, and it pokes fun at Catholicism. Amusingly, the Pythons discuss the social construct of ”gender roles” when the mother asks what gender her baby is, she receives the following response ”I think it’s a bit early to start imposing roles on it, don’t you?” In fact the idea for the hospital sketch came from Graham Chapman, himself a physician, who had noticed that hospitals were changing, with “lots and lots of machinery”. We have a short sketch that mocks hospitals obsessions with machines (especially the ones that go ‘ping!’). This leads them to question the meaning of life. The actual beginning of the film kicks off with a group of fish in a posh restaurant’s tank swim together casually, until they look at the customers outside of the tank and see their friend Howard being eaten. The Crimson Permanent Assurance is a great indicator of what was to come in regards to the future of Gilliam’s work and is a great start of the rest of the film. They rebel against yuppie corporate masters, transform their office into a pirate ship, and raid a large financial district. The short is about a group of elderly office clerks working in a small accounting firm. Having originally conceived the story as a 6-minute animated sequence in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, intended for placement at the end of Part five of The Meaning of Life, Terry Gilliam convinced the other members of Monty Python to allow him to produce and direct it as a live action piece instead.Īccording to Gilliam, the film’s rhythm, length, and style of cinematography made it a poor fit as a scene in the larger movie. So it was presented as a supplementary short ahead of the film. It is an outstanding segment that could even stand alone on its own, and that presents Gilliam fully in form as a wild fantasy director. The film starts off strong with Terry Gilliam’s excellent short The Crimson Permanent Assurance, in which an office building turns into a pirate ship. The film is divided into roughly eight segments – The Miracle of Birth Growth and Learning Fighting Each Other Middle Age Liver Organ Transplants The Autumn Years The Meaning of Life Death – and some segments are genius which showcase the Python’s talents. The Meaning of Life is perhaps the most surreal and confusing film of the Monty Python collection because there’s certain sketches which are pure comedy and other scenes which just fall flat and just come across as embarrassing to watch. It’s a return to their form here for the gang, who made their debut as a team with their surreal amusing sketch show, The Flying Circus. Unlike Holy Grail and Life of Brian which had linear, constructed narratives while The Meaning of Life is a series of short sketches which are loosely connected by the theme of exploring just what is the meaning of life. And their films Holy Grail and Life of Brian, but there was one of their films which we watched over and over again… Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. We would always make time (usually on a Friday evening) to get together and watch their TV series The Flying Circus. Growing up in my rather eccentric household, Monty Python was a huge part of our routine. Brown, And things seem hard or tough, And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,Īnd you feel that you’ve had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough, Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
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