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Biggus Dickus?” In what one critic calls the “comedy of deflation” (Larsen,
141), both Pontius Pilate and Biggus Dickus have outrageous speech
impediments that undermine every commanding word they attempt to
utter.
In the grimy and gory arena scene (“Children’s Matinee”), the Roman
provincial apparatus is degraded, suggesting the general distrust of authority,
prevalent in the 1970s, and the feeling that the government is
unsympathetic to the working people. The Roman aristocrats in the stands
are depicted as bored and frustrated to be in a backwater like Judaea,
while the Jewish peasant Brian has to toil for the state selling outlandish
concessions. When Brian strikes back with the anti-Roman graffito, the
ensuing Latin lesson he receives from the thickheaded Roman guard implies
a parody of the British education system, where clueless authority is
shown to care less about the actual meaning of the words than the correct
structure of their syntax, that is, form is privileged over significance. “This
satiric deflation of the Roman authority figures is continued throughout
the film, and can also be seen as Python’s continued fun-poking at the
BBC, the Conservative government, and the properness of their own
English society” (Larsen, 54–5). In the clash between stiff, oblivious authority
and wayward, self-interested insurgents, it is difficult to ascertain
who comes in for more ridicule when Reg, the PFJ leader, unintentionally
lists all the benefits the Roman occupation has brought to the previously
unmanageable province of Judaea:
“All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public
order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what
have the Romans ever done for us?”
“Brought peace?”
“Oh, peace . . . Shut up!”
The authority of film as a medium for the dissemination of images and
ideas was well established by the late 1970s, and Life of Brian takes aim at
the earnestness of earlier epic movies that represent the ancient Roman
world. In particular, the scope and topic of the film is intended to parody
earlier films that deal with the life of Jesus, like Ben-Hur, The Greatest
Story Ever Told (1965), and the television movie Jesus of Nazareth, leading
some to dub Life of Brian a “mock-epic” (Larsen, 151). Gilliam’s virtuoso
design of the opening titles, with blocks of stone in the shape of words, is
reminiscent of the openings of both Ben-Hur and Spartacus (1960), while
the soaring music is intended to evoke the grandeur of earlier epic scores.
MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979) 191