Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

on the Mount, where the frustrated audience members, who can barely
hear Jesus speak, argue over the words of the speech (“Blessed are the
cheese makers”) and get into a brawl. Brian sees Judith, a local woman,
and falls in love with her. He accompanies his mother, Mandy Cohen, to
the stoning of Matthias, who is condemned for blasphemy for uttering the
name “Jehovah.” Another scuffle breaks out among the over-eager crowd
members, and the presiding Jewish official ends up getting stoned, while
Matthias walks away unscathed. In the streets, Brian and his mother encounter
an “ex-leper” begging for alms, and when Brian engages him in
conversation, the beggar compares him to Jesus. Back at home, Mum
informs Brian that his father was “not Mr. Cohen,” but rather a Roman
centurion. Brian is outraged and dismayed to learn he is related to the
hated Roman race.
At the matinee show in the provincial Roman arena, Brian is working
the stands selling exotic Roman snacks. There he meets the contentious
members of the People’s Front of Judaea (the PFJ), an anti-Roman activist
group to which Judith belongs. Upset about his newly discovered Roman
heritage, and eager to be near Judith, he asks to join them; after some
debate, the members invite him to commit an act of terrorism against the
Roman state. Reg, the PFJ leader, sends Brian to the palace of Pontius
Pilate, the material symbol of the Roman occupation, to deface its walls
with an anti-Roman graffito, “Romans Go Home.” When a centurion
catches sight of him, he corrects Brian’s poor Latin grammar, and instructs
him to write the corrected slogan a hundred times. As day breaks
and Brian finishes the graffiti, the suddenly alert Roman guards chase him
through the streets until he is saved by Judith. Back at PFJ headquarters,
the terrorists are planning a new action: to kidnap Pilate’s wife and “issue
demands.” The raid on Pilate’s palace is a failure, as the PFJ members run
into a rival terrorist group with the exact same kidnapping plan. In the
fracas, Brian is arrested and hauled before Pilate, whose ridiculous speech
impediment sends the guards into paroxysms of laughter, and so Brian
easily escapes.
Trying to blend in on the Street of Prophets, where people gather to
hear the so-called wisdom of various local sages, Brian utters a few generic
but sufficiently messiah-like words; then, when he sees the Roman guards
safely departing, he trails off: “to them . . . only . . . shall be given . . .”
The tense crowd, anxious to know the rest of the message, begins to follow
Brian in earnest, calling him Messiah and Master. Brian’s followers quickly
splinter off into factions, some following his discarded gourd, while others
follow his lost sandal. Brian flees to the desert and tries to hide in the dirt
MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979) 177