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Second coming
Monty Python’s Life of Brian rises again
BY MIKE MILIARD

It’s been 25 years since the release of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which tells the story of Brian Cohen, a hapless nobody who’s born next door to Jesus on Christmas Eve and 33 years later finds himself a mistaken messiah tacked to two pieces of timber. But the film’s silver anniversary isn’t the only reason it’s back in theaters (it opens Friday at the Kendall Square). In truth, says director and Python alum Terry Jones over the phone from London, "it’s a shameless attempt to cash in on Mel Gibson’s film [The Passion of the Christ]. We just thought it was too good of a commercial opportunity to let it pass by, so our avaricious souls decided to see what we could do."

The two films do have some things in common: sandals, centurions, loincloths, dust. Both were protested vehemently and voluminously upon their release — and both did well at the box office thanks to the notoriety. "When Life of Brian came out, there was a tremendous amount of controversy surrounding it, and it did us a lot of good," Jones admits. "It obviously hasn’t done Mel any harm. We hope it can rub off a bit on us the second time."

But the comparisons end there. Whereas The Passion is a gore fest that lingers in fetishistic detail on torn flesh and broken body even as it glosses over Christ’s spiritual message, Brian is a lighthearted but pointed poke at intolerant religious hypocrites and grandiose Hollywood epics. And anyone who hurls charges of sacrilege should see the scene where Brian listens in rapt earnestness while Jesus preaches peace to the nose-picking rabble.

"It’s really not a very controversial film when you look at it," Jones says. "It’s not blasphemous, because it accepts all the basic Christian tenets. It makes fun of the propensity of human beings to take what somebody has taught — peace, and love your neighbor — and then spend 2000 years killing each other because they can’t really agree quite what way it was said, or who the neighbors were. It’s mad."

Jones won’t comment on Gibson’s Passion because he hasn’t yet seen it (more than can be said for many sanctimonious scolds). "I’m not very keen on violence in films, actually. I don’t mind making violent films, I’m just not terribly keen on seeing them."

Life of Brian isn’t particularly violent (though there is a fleeting, funny scene of male frontal nudity). But it does strive for historical accuracy. "We did sit down and watch a lot of Biblical epics — The Greatest Story Ever Told, Sodom and Gomorrah, Spartacus — before we actually started writing the thing. But it wasn’t to make fun of them as much. We wanted to make sure we got the look of things right and then do silly things within that." Indeed, many bemused extras on the film’s Tunisia location had also worked on high-minded pictures like Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth — and the method to Monty Python’s madness had them nonplussed. "They would shake their heads and say, ‘Mr. Zeffirelli would never do it like this, you know.’ "

The film closes with Brian and his co-condemned hanging on crosses and joining in a jovial jingle called "Always Look at the Bright Side of Life." But in these dark days of turmoil and terrorist threats, fear mongering and fiery bigotry, does Jones think it may be harder than ever to do that? He pauses. "Yes, unfortunately, I think it is. It is a very dangerous situation. You have people in the White House that are unchallenged, militaristic chauvinists who think that with power and might we can make the world however we want it to be, by force. And they’re doing it. It’s pretty scary for the rest of the world. I have doubts about coming to America. Somebody asked me if I was going to go over to LA, and I’m not really sure. I don’t know if I trust the immigration people there. I might get stopped, or they might put a hand up my bum."

Monty Python’s Life of Brian opens this Friday, May 7, at the Kendall Square Cinema, 1 Kendall Square in Cambridge; call (617) 499-1996.


Issue Date: May 7 - 13, 2004
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