After the next few apocalypses, hundreds of thousands of years from the moment we clever humans smugly call "now," the great philosopher-scientists will gather to assemble the remaining traces of our present time and species. In particular, these evolved beings will find fascination in the structure of our crania, which will appear as flimsy vestigial nubs compared to their enormous, armored noggins. These telepathic giants will nonetheless struggle a bit to suss the function of our two pretty little orbs in the front, especially in relation to the puzzling religious artifacts known as "movies." Then, in the nick of time, just before the universe blows up, they'll discover the comedic Arthurian knockoff Monty Python and the Holy Grail, thereby answering all spiritual riddles (of the patriarchal ilk), revealing the secrets of humanity (the arrogant West, anyway) and thwarting the annihilation of All That Is -- well, at least until the next bureaucratic cock-up.
Knight court: The jesters of Monty Python turn the tables on the legend of King Arthur in their 1975 work of comedic genius Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
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Rated PG
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So hearken, please, and try to follow. What we have here is an historical document of inestimable value, describing in no uncertain terms the terrible and beautiful times before AIDS, before Ronald met Margaret, before Western culture was devastated by a plague of so-called comedies so heinous that their titles cannot be mentioned here. (Okay, fine, twist my arm: The Cannonball Run, Teen Wolf, Zapped and -- heaven help us -- their respective sequels.) Produced in 1975, and bookended by some typically brilliant films of that decade (such as Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation in 1974 and Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1976), Monty Python and the Holy Grail represents a chapter of cinematic history when movies weren't produced primarily as a means of separating the exhausted masses from their meager wages. Bravo, that.
Verily, the appreciation of high absurdity -- much like high art -- requires a modicum of intelligence, and in this capacity the Pythons have proven themselves sublime. They are as prepared to quote (badly) from Robert de Borron's Grail romance Joseph d'Arimathie as they are to fling Gallic livestock hither and thither from towering castle walls. They're willing to taint their own opening titles with a strange sort of Swedish folk tale ("A moose once bit my sister . . .") and then wrap up their movie with a seemingly crude ending pretty much universally dismissed as "bad," but which actually ties the ideological struggles of the Middle Ages to the social unrest of the (then) present time. Got brilliance?
Those who have enjoyed dalliances with 12th-century scribe Chretien de Troyes or his countless honorable pilferers will require no introduction to this particular epoch. For the rest of you scalawags, however, here's a quick illumination: The year is A.D. 932, the place is England and the smell is generally unpleasant. Madness and mayhem are the order of the day, with malicious marauders terrorizing the confused population pretty much as they do nowadays in places like North Hollywood. Only one man -- an alcoholic homosexual physician and comedian named Graham Chapman -- can bring unity to this realm of chaos. Posing rather convincingly as Arthur, King of the Britons, he pretends to ride an invisible horse across the length and breadth of the land, with his humble servant, Patsy (Terry Gilliam), clopping together two empty halves of a coconut to simulate the sound of equine hooves.
Right here, in the opening moments, the great separation of this divisive film is made manifest, as the faithful remain and the pooh-poohers shove off. "That's, like, real, like, dumb," the latter may be heard to mutter. "Let's see if we can still get into that Freddie Prinze Jr. movie." And off they'll scamper, never knowing what they're about to miss. Pity them, the silly sods.
Once the disdainful chaff wanders away from the appreciative wheat, it's easier to enjoy the Pythons at work. Soon enough, in a book of tales narrated by Michael Palin, we encounter Arthur's knights: Sir Robin (Eric Idle), Sir Lancelot (John Cleese), Sir Galahad (Palin) and Sir Bedevere (Terry Jones), among a few expendable others. As in their television series, Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974), and their later, equally brilliant films Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life (1983), the fellows each play manifold roles, including the knights' assorted trusty pages (Archibald, Concorde, Gimpy, Humphrey, Ian and William). They also turn up in assorted guises as the King of Swamp Castle, Tim the Enchanter, Roger the Shrubber and -- in the case of co-director Gilliam -- the Animator.
The design of Holy Grail has Gilliam's paw prints all over it, as was slightly less apparent in the later films helmed solely by co-director Jones. It's all good, but Gilliam's vision -- accented by the production design of Roy Smith and cinematography of yet another Terry (Bedford) -- gives this project a timeless, otherworldly air. Watching it, it's hard to believe that these guys were actually meandering across heaths and trudging across rope bridges, with electricians and caterers not far away. It seems more as if this souvenir of the Absurd Ages has simply existed for a millennium, to be unearthed by hippie archaeologists a score and six years ago.
