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pit of an old recluse; when Brian’s followers find him there, they persecute
the cranky old man as a “heretic.” They beg Brian for words of wisdom,
but he tells them to “fuck off ” (“How shall we fuck off, O Lord?” inquires
one devotee). The next morning at Mum’s house, hundreds of followers
are amassed in the street below, waiting to hear Brian speak. After Mum
scolds the crowd for their unruliness, Brian utters a few bland words to
them that only reinforce their belief that he is the Messiah. The PFJ members,
seizing on Brian’s newfound celebrity, urge him to minister to the
believers, but when Brian tries to run away from the chaos, he falls once
again into the hands of the Roman guards.
It happens to be the celebration of Passover, and Pontius Pilate
addresses the rowdy crowd, offering to “rwelease” one of the Jewish prisoners.
Pilate’s friend, Biggus Dickus, who also has an outrageous speech
impediment, has come from Rome to help with crowd control. The promise
of deliverance comes too late for Brian, as he has already been sent off to
be crucified. The “crucifixion party” proceeds from the prison to the hill,
where the condemned prisoners get into noisy arguments with the executioners.
When a Roman official comes with orders to release Brian, there
is such a ruckus that everyone yells: “I am Brian!” Several people show up
at Brian’s cross to speak to him. Officials from the PFJ, “not, in fact, the
Rescue Committee,” pay tribute to his martyrdom, and Judith honors
him as a hero, but his Mum expresses her disappointment that he ends up
that way. Brian is all alone at the last, but in his final moments, a fellow
crucifixee tries to cheer him up by advising him to “always look on the
bright side of life.”
Ancient Background
The action of the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian takes place around the
year ad 30 in Judaea, which was a small but well-known province of
the Roman Empire during the years ad 6–66, more or less equivalent to
the region of modern Israel and the Palestinian territories. Thus Life of
Brian refers to the same historical period and place as the films The Robe
(1953) and Ben-Hur (1959). When Herod the Great died in 4 bc, the
emperor Augustus divided his kingdom among his three sons: Herod
Antipas ruled Galilee as a tetrarch until ad 39; Philip was tetrarch of the
Golan heights until ad 34; and Herod Archelaus was made ethnarch, or
“national leader,” of Judaea. After several local uprisings and messianic
revolts, Augustus removed Herod Archelaus, and in ad 6 made Judaea an
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