The Partial Historians

We are in shock that it has taken us this long to cover the cult classic that is Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). We have Rslaugesen over on Patreon to thank for pointing out this glaring oversight.

Special Episode – Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

Once we got started, it was hard for us to stop talking about the Life of Brian. British comedy was a staple of our childhoods and Monty Python was one of our favourites. It was a treat to follow the development of this movie from Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory to a Sliding Doors-style story of Brian Cohen, born in the manger over from Christ.

A still from Life of Brian showing Brian’s followers admiring his sandal, one of the sacred objects he unwittingly bestows upon them. Courtesy of FM Cinema.

Whilst Monty Python were probably trying to make a parody of 1970s Britain rather than a historically accurate portrait of first century CE Judea, we still found this film intriguing. From wolf’s nipples to imperialism, we take you through all the best Roman scenes… and perhaps a few non-Roman scenes as well. Who can resist talking about the Virgin Mandy?

Part of the appeal of Life of Brian is the fact that it is not afraid to make fun of the Romans (or anyone) and shows a much less glamorous side of the empire. Quite the contrast to the epics of the 1950s and 1960s.

Things to Look Out For:

• Far too many ‘reenactments’ of our favourite moments


• The Biggus Dickus scene


• What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us? Not as much as this scene claims!


• The People’s Front of Judea in action!


• The famous BBC2 interview with John Cleese and Michael Palin


• The hilarious parody of the BBC2 interview on Not the Nine O’Clock News


• Dr G’s excitement upon spotting the frescoes from the Villa of the Mysteries

Comedies don’t always stand the test of time. We can spot some awkward moments in the film, but overall, we think Life of Brian stands the test of time. Forty-five years after it’s release, we would love to know whether you agree!

Our Sources

• Blanshard, A. J. L., Shahabudin, K. 2011. ‘Satirising Cine-Antiquity – Monty Python’s Life of Brian 1979’ in Classics on Screen: Ancient Greece and Rome on Film (Bristol Classical Press), 172-193.


• James G. Crossley (2011) ‘Life of Brian or Life of Jesus? Uses of Critical Biblical Scholarship and Non-Orthodox Views of Jesus in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.’ Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 1 (1): 93-114.


• Cyrino, M. S. 2005. ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ in Big Screen Rome (Blackwell), 176-193.


• Ehrman, B. (2015). Brian and the Apocalyptic Jesus: Parody as a Historical Method. In Jesus and Brian (pp. 141–150). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780567665362.ch-011


• Horsley, Richard A. 2014. Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine (University of South Carolina Press)


• Keddie, A. 2019. Class and Power in Roman Palestine: The Socioeconomic Setting of Judaism and Christian Origins (Cambridge University Press)


• Levine, A.-J. (2015). Beards for Sale: The Uncut Version of Brian, Gender and Sexuality. In Jesus and Brian (pp. 167–184). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780567665362.ch-013


• Stiebel, G. D. 2015. ‘‘Romani Ite Domum’ – Expressions of Identity and Resistance in Judaea’ in Taylor, Joan E. (ed). Jesus and Brian: Exploring the Historical Jesus and his Times via Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Bloomsbury), 107-112.


• Taylor, J. E. (Ed.). (2015). Jesus and Brian exploring the historical Jesus and his times via Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Bloomsbury T&T Clark.


• Telford, W. (2015). Muggeridge/Stockwood interviewMonty Python’s Life of Brian and the Jesus Film. In Jesus and Brian (pp. 3–18). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780567665362.ch-001

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:15
Music. Welcome to the partial historians.

Dr G 0:18
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,

Dr Rad 0:23
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged and when citizens turn against each other. I’m Dr Rad and

Dr G 0:33
I’m Dr G, we consider Rome as the Romans saw it, by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.

Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.

Hello and welcome to a special episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts. Dr Rad,

Dr G 1:07
and I am. Dr G, we are thrilled to be here.

Dr Rad 1:12
We are because today we are returning once more to my home, away from homes, Hollywood. Well, not really, Hollywood, actually,

Dr G 1:21
really, do you do you holiday in Hollywood? Actually,

Dr Rad 1:24
No I hate Hollywood, but we are returning to Rome at the movies, which is my safe space.

Dr G 1:32
I do like this space as well, and over the years, I feel like I’ve learned a lot from you and your expertise in this area. So I’m super excited for this episode.

Dr Rad 1:42
It is very kind of you to say, especially because I cannot understand Latin

Dr G 1:48
comes and goes.

Dr Rad 1:51
All right, so Dr, G, today we are actually looking at a British version of Rome on screen, and that is Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and I cannot believe we have not talked about it until this point.

Dr G 2:08
I know this is very exciting, and this has come about because of a Patreon request, which I think is excellent as well. Interested in the depiction of Rome on screen in what is essentially a satire of the period, but also the broader question of, what has Rome ever done for the provinces? I

Dr Rad 2:29
make so many Monty Python puns, it is actually insulting that we haven’t talked about these films at all. I mean, look, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna set the scene personally a little bit here. Dr, G, so. Dr G, you and I are Australian. Oh, God. Now because we’re Australians of a certain age, I don’t know about you, but I grew up watching a lot of British television. I think these days British culture is maybe less of a thing for anyone growing up in Australia. And obviously a lot of Australians don’t grow up here. And even even for our age group, it was probably because of my background being like Anglo background as well. That’s why I was watching that kind of stuff. But it was also because they were like four television channels, and I feel like the British influence was fairly strong, along with American influence and that sort of thing. I certainly watched American TV as well, but there were a lot of reruns on television that you would watch after school, and so I watched a lot of 50s, 60s, 70s television as a child born somewhere in the 80s, I won’t tell you where. I don’t know, is it the same for you?

Dr G 3:42
Yeah, by and large. So my father is English, so I think that has stronger,

Dr Rad 3:48
yeah, the force is strong with this one.

Dr G 3:51
Ah the imperialism. But this meant that there was a preference for British shows when I was a child, growing up in our household over American TV programming, yeah? So there tended to be rules around what you could watch that came out of America, whereas for English things and British things, it was much more sort of open slather, yeah, and the family was happy to oblige if you wanted to watch some Monty Python, yeah. And

Dr Rad 4:18
look, I think there’s something to be said for still to this day, there’s a certain brand to Australian humor that I think will always have a bit of a legacy in the British connection, in the sense that, if I think about the sort of reruns I would watch from America, they were very much like, Oh, darling. Did you get sauce on your tie again? Canned laughter. Whereas the British shows that I tended to watch growing up were, I think, a little bit more tongue in cheek, more absurdist,

Dr G 4:47
yeah, less canned laughter. It was really just waiting for you to laugh, and you got to choose when,

Dr Rad 4:54
yeah. So that’s my personal background. So I think that’s why Monty Python was very much a part of. Of my upbringing, along with other things that I consider to be classics like Black Adder. Ah,

Dr G 5:06
yes, another a love story. Yes, exactly

Dr Rad 5:08
like Black Adder, Are You Being Served Dad’s Army? I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

Dr G 5:15
And look, I was a great fan of red dwarf as well. I

Dr Rad 5:19
see I never actually watched that one anyway. I definitely was aware of it, even though I didn’t watch it myself. So yeah,

Dr G 5:27
yeah, there is a tendency in British humor from these periods to lean into class critique, which might be somewhere to start with. This film

Dr Rad 5:38
might be relevant indeed. All right, so let’s maybe start, I thought, with a basic overview of what this film is even about. And warning to you all, this will contain spoilers, but you’ve had decades to see in the film, because it came out before I was born.

Dr G 5:52
It came out in 1979 so we’re definitely younger than that.

Dr Rad 5:56
And look, there is a very quick way to sum up the basic premise of this film. So it is a film about Brian Cohen, a young man who happens to be born in the manger over from Jesus, and from there on, kind of lives a somewhat parallel life to Jesus Christ, in that he lives in the same area, in the same hood. This is the sliding doors of Jesus. It is, it is the sliding doors of Jesus. And so we basically follow the life story of Brian Cohen and see what happens in the time period in which he’s living, which is around, you know, somewhere in the 30s, CE, because it is in the year of our Lord, obviously. And so it kind of starts with the Nativity and goes through to Brian’s death in his sort of mid 30s, which is obviously around the same age that Jesus presumably was, if we take those dates to be accurate.

Dr G 6:50
Well, there’s some reasonable historical evidence for a man called Jesus, there is in this time period, and we’re in your favorite Imperial time period as well. This is Tiberius. I know time to shine. I

Dr Rad 7:02
know. I know not many people I think know that Tiberius was the emperor in charge when Jesus Christ was

Dr G 7:08
crucified. I think more people would dislike Tiberius if they knew that well. I

Dr Rad 7:12
mean, look, I’m gonna say something controversial here, but to be honest, I don’t think he was deeply involved with what was happening. I think that’s kind of part of the problem.

Dr G 7:21
Look, the man at the top of the pile who’s ostensibly in charge of everything, says it’s not his responsibility. He doesn’t hold the hose.

Dr Rad 7:28
Well, look, I’m just gonna say there are a lot of people that were crucified underneath Roman imperial rule, and even before the Empire existed, and Jesus is just one of them. In my book, controversy, but that’s because I should say I am not a Christian, so

Dr G 7:48
neither am I, although I think this film is quite respectful of religion, a lot of people agreed consider it to be blasphemous and to be a film that is heretical in nature, but they generally don’t touch the story of Jesus at all. In this film, it is very much focused on Brian and his adventures, yeah, and, but I just think is more to do with fanaticism. And, yeah, how people get into sort of cults of belief,

Dr Rad 8:16
exactly? And I just said, I should say, as my own personal perspective, I’m not a Christian. So I’m not coming at this subject with any particular reverence. I know of Jesus because of obviously being raised in a at the time, largely Christian country, and also because the culture around me when I was growing up was largely Christian. And also because, you know Rome, you know the more that you study Rome, the more you come into contact with it. But I wouldn’t identify wouldn’t

Dr G 8:43
identify as a Christian. The deeper get into Roman history, the more you get into early Christianity. That

Dr Rad 8:47
is true Exactly, exactly, anyway. So to give a bit of background to people who might be less familiar with Monty Python, I thought maybe we could give a little bit of a pitted history of Monty Python. So Monty Python are a beloved to most people. I think comedy troupe and they kind of came about in British society. I think a really interesting time, you know, as like the landscape, I think was changing in terms of cultural values, cultural criticism and comedy and that sort of thing. But they’re actually very highly educated men. You know, a lot of them came from degrees at Oxford and Cambridge, where they were studying things like medicine, law and, of course, history. And while they were there, though, they got involved in comedy. Obviously, those particular universities are known to have pretty legendary comedy groups like the footlights, and they ended up getting involved in writing and performing the various comedy shows that were seen as being kind of at the forefront of comedy at the time, like being quite cutting edge. So, for example, Do Not Adjust Your Set, The Frost Report. And at last, The 1948 show. And these were all kind of, a lot of them were kind of sketch shows, and that sort of. Where they were working on things for the BBC. They ended up teaming together because they had encountered each other either at university or they met each other working on these sorts of shows. And they came together as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, where they produced a television show for the BBC between the years of 1969 and 1974 and the men involved, of course, being Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Michael Palin. And something to note, perhaps, is that I don’t believe that Monty Python’s Flying Circus as a show was actually screened in the USA until 1974 so it kind of be started to be shown in sort of the mid 70s across the pond as this

Dr G 10:45
interesting. Okay, so they get a late start into the US. Yeah,

Dr Rad 10:49
a little bit of a later start. Yeah, exactly. And they always, I think, therefore, appealed to people who were because of their style of comedy, which was really as it came out of a lot of a lot of these shows, and also was influenced by people like Spike Milligan and his brand of comedy. But it was different in the way that they would set up a sketch. It didn’t have to have a punch line. It was it was absurdist, as you said before, that was kind of their sense of humor. It was very much satire of British society and particularly the British class system, that’s a lot of what their sketches sort of focused on, and that sort of thing when they were making the television show. And so as a result, I suppose, given that they’re coming about, sort of like the late 60s, early 70s as a group, I think we can kind of see how that’s obviously a key time in society where we know that there are people who are starting to be more questioning and critical of the status quo,

Dr G 11:47
and this is the post war generation that are now hitting adulthood, and they’ve got some hard questions to ask about the society that has been built around them in that landscape and as a consequence of those war the 20th century. So,

Dr Rad 12:02
yeah, exactly. So Monty Python as a group started to transition away from television and into making motion pictures together. I don’t think they ever had like necessarily the hugest audience when they were on TV, but they certainly had a very decent sized audience, and they were tending to be more like appealing to like intellectual people or people with a slight intellectual bent, because their comedy is very clever, to be honest. They’ve actually been criticized for, I think, bringing a little bit too much of their sort of university level of education to their types of sketches. But anyway, so they started making movies, so perhaps the biggest hit that most people would have heard of before Life of Brian is, of course, Monty Python and the search for the Holy Grail, a classic. Indeed it is. But a lot of their films still reflected their background in sketch comedy. And the interesting thing about Monty Python, I always thought is that when I watched them as a younger person, I kind of always thought that they were very clever people who were getting together and riffing, you know, and that’s kind of how their stuff came about. But actually, because they were all highly experienced writer performers, and they had that background before they even got together, but then obviously together, they sort of brought that stuff from their background. They actually were extremely, I think, methodical in that they tended to really write things and rehearse them, and it was all very carefully planned so that obviously the humor and the joke that they were aiming for would sort of come through in the final product. So I think they sort of give the impression sometimes that they were improvising, but actually it was all quite planned out, yes.

Dr G 13:40
And I think if you watch, go back and watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus, it is very, I would say today, hit and miss, oh yeah, at the time was uniquely constructed, yes, for things that were emerging in that time period, the idea that they didn’t really care about plot. For instance, no Life of Brian is considered the first film that they do which is plot driven, because while holy grail comes out a few years earlier, and it does have something of a plot, there is also insertions of random sketches and chaotic bits and pieces. So there is a sequence that leads you to understand a plot, but Life of Brian is scripted and does seem to have a very clear narrative arc. Yes,

Dr Rad 14:29
absolutely and but even so, I think, I think that reflects something in their style of writing. So because they were all writer performers, Terry Gilliam, obviously, is more known as he was a performer, obviously, with the group, and he did contribute, but he more contributed, I think, in terms of his animations, which are obviously a huge part of Monty Python’s esthetic. But, yeah, but most of the rest of them, they are writer performers, and I think that the way that they would approach things is that they would go away and just write. You know, they would go. And write. And they tended to sometimes, I think even split off into particular grouping within the wider troupe. Like, I think Graham Chapman and John Cleese worked quite closely together a lot of the time. And I think think Terry Jones and Michael Palin might have worked together a lot of the time, but nonetheless, they would sort of go away and write bits and pieces and then start to come back and sort of compare notes and bring it together. So you can kind of see how, even when they’re writing a narrative film, I think it still kind of starts with, like sketches and scenes that they can use as a basis of something, and then bring it together. Yeah, so Life of Brian, it is universally, I think, accepted. Had it through in this moment where they were asked, after Holy Grail, what was going to be their next project? And they replied, Jesus Christ, lust for glory, which was a pun based on a film that had come out in 1970 pattern, lust for glory. But it did obviously germinate. Yeah, there was the seed

Dr G 15:56
had been planted. One facetious remark, I believe, by Eric Idle, yes, exactly. Then gets expanded into like, oh, maybe we should consider an angle on the life of Jesus and the sorts of things that might be up for critique and lampooning here,

Dr Rad 16:14
yes, exactly. And they actually went away and did their research. And when they did their research, they found that Jesus Christ is actually not terribly funny.

Dr G 16:24
This is a very serious subject matter and not one to be laughed at. Because, actually, as far as I understand it, they came to the conclusion that the message that Jesus is offering is genuinely a good one, yeah, and there’s not much to be laughed at. There, no,

Dr Rad 16:38
no, exactly. And so because they didn’t find that Jesus himself or his message was necessarily anything to be laughed at. They started playing around with ideas of what was happening around him that we could possibly work with. And they had a few ideas. I believe one of them was having a 13th disciple, and Brian would be that particular character who was always the one who unlucky, yeah, he was always the one that missed the miracle. So they played around with that idea, but eventually they decided on the idea of having a parallel life set up for their particular narrative. Thus Brian Cohen was born, and I think the idea as well was that they found, as you said earlier, the way that people engage with religion, particularly the way that people were engaging with various cults at this time, was what was funny, not necessarily like it was easy enough to make fun at people who, you know, take things too far or take things too seriously, rather than the person that the religion is based around. So it’s more the Messiah fervor that they decided to make fun of.

Dr G 17:44
Yeah, yeah. So that real interest in that there, there is some sort of Savior figure that they can be identified, and then, once identified, must be followed, yes, and how you go about demonstrating your loyalty to a messiah. All of this is up for a little bit of a joke in this film. Yes, exactly.

Dr Rad 18:02
So they were able to use the sets from a TV show that had been filmed by Franco zifarelli on Jesus of Nazareth as the basis for their sets, because that’s convenient. That saves money. Yeah, and they decided to film in Tunisia. Legendarily, they were going to be making this film with EMI, but EMI decided that it was way too

Dr G 18:24
blasphemous. Do not want to get in trouble with Christians. Exactly.

Dr Rad 18:29
Basically, there was, like a Roman Catholic friend of like the chief executive, a guy called Lord Bernard del font, yeah, who said this is way too close to blasphemy, or indeed, is blasphemy, and so EMI pulled the financing because Eric idol and George Harrison, yes, that George Harrison were friends. George Harrison helped them to get financing, as well as putting up a million pounds himself. I

Dr G 18:55
kind of love that, like one of the Beatles is involved and is crucial to the story of this film. I love that exactly.

Dr Rad 19:01
And ended up making a small cameo as the owner of the mount in the film. And he did that just because he was a fan of Monty Python, and he just kind of wanted to see what they did with his particular story. And so that’s how they ended up being able to go off to Tunisia and film this particular movie, which happened, I think it was written very quickly. I think it was filmed quite quickly. And this is because, again, as I said to you, like the way that Monty Python do things they do, I think actually plan things out far more than people might realize. As a result, a lot of their stuff was put together relatively quickly for a movie. But

Dr G 19:35
yes, yeah, I think there was a couple of years there of preparation and definitely some delays when EMI pulled out absolutely and then they got back on track after George Harrison got involved. And then

Dr Rad 19:46
so the film is obviously set in the province of Judea, a province of the Roman Empire at this point in time. And obviously it’s meant to be around the 30s, where most of the action takes place, or it. It for the manger nativity scene, obviously, where Brian and Jesus have won right at the beginning.

Dr G 20:06
I mean, it’s still in the same area and still kind of under Roman control at that time as well, although probably the client King Herod is in charge around

Dr Rad 20:16
that time, I was gonna say it’s a bit of historical setting for you all. So Herod, the great, was in charge of Judea. Well, sorry, was in charge of a whole region until about four BCE, which is when he died, which obviously would be around the time that Jesus were born, or maybe a few years before. The Dating is obviously a bit speculative. And Augustus had been in charge at that point in time, and he ended up splitting the kingdom of Herod, the great between his sons. So Herod Antipas was set up in Galilee as the tetrarch, and he would be there until around 39 CE. So just after the events that we’re focusing on transpired, Philip was set up as the Tetrarch of Golan Heights until around 3040, and Herod Archelaus was the leader of Judea at around, well at first, but see, the thing was, I believe that he became a bit of a problematic leader and was removed. And this is, this is what kind of started to stir up trouble in this region, like his removal and the rival factions that existed within Judea at this point in time, which weren’t actually initially, necessarily hugely anti Roman, which is kind of the impression you might get from watching Life of Brian. There certainly were anti Roman groups by the time. But you know, as you, as you travel through, but really the around the time of Jesus, I’m not sure how many anti Roman groups there were. I think there was a lot of more factional, regional fighting going on and rivalry. I

Dr G 21:50
think you’ve got a lot to think about when you get to the fallout of Herod, the great so a client King inserted by Rome in order to ensure stability that is a product of the Roman education system, so coming into an area of which he is local too. And so this is something that the Romans tended to do quite a lot, is that they take families of high significance, politically as hostages, then raise their children in Rome and then send them back out to rule as a friend of Rome in their place. And so trying to secure regions like this, from a Roman perspective, was all about, well, how can we make the local politics work in our favor? Absolutely, yeah. And so I think there is a sense underlying that kind of activity, which suggests that Rome understood that this was a little bit far out of their reach, that they needed somebody on the ground to do Roman work in a Roman way that wouldn’t be completely offensive to the local people, and understood the local cultural norms and things like that. So when we think about this region, and I feel like it stands out for me really pertinently in this time period when we’re recording, having seen what is happening in Palestine and what is happening with modern Israel, and the horrific amount of death that is going on there that these complexities have a very, very long history, absolutely,

Dr Rad 23:25
yeah, yeah, because Judea is roughly modern Israel, Palestine together, like roughly, roughly, yeah, yeah.

Dr G 23:33
It doesn’t map on exactly, but this whole area has a very long history of complex relationships and also a sense in which who has a priority over areas of land exactly. And when you split something like a client Kingdom amongst it was supposed to be four sons, that’s why we’re calling them tetrarchs, but one of them ends up having half of the region. Yeah, that’s a bit of a problem already. And he’s the problematic one that gets removed, right? And then you have to bring in, then Rome’s like, Okay, well, we’ll send in some real we’ll send in Romans. Yes, you know, we’ll have a visual Roman presence in this region of the province of Judea. We’ll turn it into a province. It’s no longer a client king. You guys cannot look after yourselves. We’ve got too much at stake in this area. Yeah, we want to have control of it. We’ll send our own people. And so by the time we get to the really key parts of the narrative that are the Life of Brian, we’re dealing with Pontius Pilate.

Dr Rad 24:38
We are better known to everybody who’s seen Jesus Christ Superstar as Pontius Pilate.

Dr G 24:44
Pontius Pilate, well, I like calling him Pontius Pilate as well, because it makes me think of airplanes. But the Latin is Pontius Pilate, yes.

Dr Rad 24:55
And he was a prefect of Judea from around 26 CE to. Be 36 CE.

Dr G 25:01
So he sees all of the key political things that are going to make the Christians very mad, like

Dr Rad 25:08
there for it all. So he is there underneath, as you said, the Anthro Tiberius is,

Dr G 25:15
keep that in mind, everybody Tiberius was in charge,

Dr Rad 25:20
not gonna deny it good. Now, of course, the background of all of this is that there’s also a very powerful high priest who’s also important to this Jesus story, who’s in power from around 18 CE to 37 CE, and that is Caiaphas. So Caiaphas is someone who will have contact with Pilate as a man on the ground who Pilate will consult when making decisions. And it’s between these two guys that we see the Jesus story unfolding, really, in the sense that Jesus is obviously arrested, he is tried before Caiaphas, and this is something that’s recorded in all four of the Gospel accounts and the Sanhedrin, which is the Jewish religious council Jesus, is given over to the Roman powers by the high priests and their council. And it is the Romans who decide to crucify Jesus Christ, and that’s kind of the background to what is happening. Yeah.

Dr G 26:24
So in this background, what we can see already is that there is complex interrelationships between the political and the religious. And yeah, I think there is a tendency, from a Western perspective, to separate out state and church. Yeah, people like to do that. It is a fallacy. It doesn’t matter where you live. Those things are very entwined. So think about where you live and how the politics operates, and how spiritual beliefs actually have a great deal of influence on how those political actions and beliefs get

Dr Rad 26:58
Yeah, because I believe that Pilate actually gave Jesus to Herod, Antipas and and this particular Herod was like, no, no, I’m

Dr G 27:04
not doing anything about

Dr Rad 27:06
that you deserve.

Dr G 27:08
I don’t want to get involved. Yeah,

Dr Rad 27:10
and Pilate. Therefore, Pilate was like, Okay, fine, crucifixion, it is so, yeah, it is interesting to sort of look at, like the very high level involvement of church and state, as you say, like the Jewish powers in the region in a political sense, Jewish power in the region in a religious sense, and also the Roman powers in the region to this whole thing that’s happening. And

Dr G 27:29
the Romans, For all of their vaunted pragmatism, are a highly religious people themselves. So it’s not like they’re above any of that, no. And it’s just trying to figure out, from their perspective, how can they get the best leverage on a population that they’re seeking to control for their own ends? Yes. So I mean, in short, the answer to the question, What have the Romans ever done for people in the provinces? The answer is,

Dr Rad 27:54
not much. Ouch.

Speaker 1 27:56
It’s it’s devastating, and it is a process of sort of cultural wiping out over time. Yeah, it is imperialism in its very core form. Life of Brian. Definitely engage with that in really interesting ways. So, but

Dr Rad 28:11
before we get into that fully, I guess we have to obviously acknowledge that it is intended to be a satire. I have as a film scholar, I therefore have questions about, obviously, what do you do with something that’s not necessarily trying to be historically accurate, but is set in a historical period? Because, quite frankly, the men involved enjoy dressing up in costume.

Dr G 28:32
Well, you know, they saw an opportunity, and they really took it, yeah, but as

Dr Rad 28:36
you said before, I think this is where we obviously have to acknowledge like their goal is, obviously to produce a comedy that is what they are. They are a comedy troupe. And I kind of think that comedy is obviously one of those mediums that is naturally going to be taking risks, perhaps more than other formats, even tragedy. I think comedy kind of takes risk, and I think it also does, to a certain extent, obviously reflect the time in which it is made, because obviously people are going to find things funny that are relevant to their to their lives. I think kind of the genius of Monty Python is that some of their stuff has stood the test of time and that we still find it really funny. And I will go out and say, right now, I’m a huge fan of life for Brian, I think it is hysterical, in spite of the fact that I can obviously see there are certain things that may not have dated as well as others, but I still think overall, it’s a really funny film. But of course, like any movie, it reflects the time in which it was made and what was considered funny then. And also, I suppose what even is what was considered cutting edge back then. You can, you can see it, obviously, but that’s something I think is true of any film, yes, and

Dr G 29:39
I think you’re totally correct in terms of thinking about like context is so relevant. So there are some jokes in this film that would not fly today, I would think. And there are some moments that I think in hindsight if, for instance, John Cleese knew i. The future when he was making this film. Some of the some of the lines that he’s given in this script that he reproduces, I think, are really they’re foreshadowing of certain things that we see later in his life, and that, I think is quite interesting as well. I’m going to leave that a complete mystery. I’m not going to go.

Dr Rad 30:18
Are you going to tell me what these moments are. Well,

Dr G 30:22
look, let me see how I feel later on, we can return to that subject. So I don’t know about you, but I’ve gone through this film, and I’ve sort of gone chronologically, looking at ways that Romans and Rome is kind of represented, and thinking about what could that mean, and not thinking about necessarily the humor of it, because I don’t know that I, I am not worthy to comment on the humor of the film. And clearly they’re doing something which is ahistorical and a make believe fictional story set in a historical time period which obviously has all sorts of potential issues associated with it. So anything you might say could be dismissed. Yeah, look absolutely. But I have things to say nonetheless. I’m

Dr Rad 31:04
very happy to move in that direction. But before you start, I feel like there’s some filmy stuff that I’m going to use for additional context. So we’ve had some context now about Monty, Python, the group, I think we obviously have the context of the satirical nature of the film. And as you said, the satire is not even necessarily of life in the 30 CE in Judea, Monty, Python, in all of their historical films, and also in their TV show. As we said, it’s about British society at the time. So basically, they are plucking British characters out of the 1970s and plunking them in 30 CE. And you can see this in many, many ways, because that’s basically what all of their characters are. And these are some of my favorite moments, which I’m just going to mention in terms of examples. So you’ve got the liberal bureaucrat in Michael Palin, who’s organizing the crucifixion. Crucifixion, yes, one crossmeres down to the left.

Dr G 31:58
Next. Good, yeah, good, good. That

Dr Rad 32:02
is absolutely one of my most favorite moments in the entire film. You’ve also, of course, got the working class often represented in characters played by Eric Idle. They’re sort of cheeky, pulling everyone’s leg every moment. Oh, and also, again, one of my other favorite aspects is the way that Monty Python makes fun of the working class trade unions in the People’s Front of Judea, as well as the Judeans Popular Front and all those sorts of groups, as well as the style of bureaucrat that you see in like John Cleese’s high priest at the stoning, all of that kind of stuff. As well as the women. Obviously, they’re not huge characters, but they are there as well. And also, of course, in scenes like Sermon on the Mount, you can see it. I’m sure we’ll get into that in a bit of into that in a bit of detail, but in terms of the film context. So one thing I wanted to highlight in particular, because it’s not something that people from outside of Britain or British Dominions might be aware of, is that there is in British comedy a really strong tradition of drag, yes, yeah, as a style of comedy, which people might not be aware of. So I guess I flag that drag has a really big part in British music hall comedy, and that’s gonna say it’s a staple of pantomime. Yes, it’s still exactly and to this day it still is a really big thing. So that’s just something to be aware of in terms of where Monty Python is coming from in the way that they do their comedy and the way that they often have men obviously dressing up as women rather than getting women to play those particular parts. But in terms of feel more generally, I’m sure that anyone who’s listening to this podcast is aware of this. But just in case you’re not, here it goes. Obviously, by the time we get to 1979 when Life of Brian comes out, the golden age of epics has peaked and gone. But those films, I think, are still very much there in that people of that time period, like in the 1970s would be familiar with the big blockbusters of the 1950s in particular few in the early 60s. So for example, your Quo Vadis, you’re Ben Hur those sorts of big biblical epics. And Monty Python was certainly very aware of those films. And so I think there’s sometimes deliberately playing on or playing up to those biblical epics. I know that Terry Jones in particular, like basically sat in a room for a while and re watched a lot of those sorts of movies. And you can see that right from the get go in, that the nativity scene is definitely very similar to the nativity scene that you see in Ben Hur even the way that Terry Gilliam has illustrated the credits. It’s obviously a play on the types of credits that you get in even Spartacus, which is obviously like a weird kind of it’s not a biblical epic, but there are those weird Christian elements to it, as well as some of the other big blockbusters of the time, like Ben Hur and King of Kings. So you can definitely see them playing with that. And even the idea of having someone in this time period leading a parallel life to Jesus is obviously very famous from other movies like Ben Hur. That’s literally what Judah Ben Hur is often up to. You know he’s what I know he’s. His life is intersecting with the Christ as he goes. As we get out of the 1960s though, we’ve obviously seen like the collapse of the studio system in America, and we start to see slightly more irreverent films coming out about Ancient Rome in general. So you have in 1966 movies like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And as we move into the 1970s because the studio system has been truly dismantled by then, there is this brief period where you get a lot of, I suppose, what we would call more realistic films, like the audience wanting to see things that aren’t maybe so stage managed and escapist in nature, things that are more gritty, more about real life and real problems and that sort of thing. So you can obviously think of these are American examples, but you can think of movies like, you know, the godfather and Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, films that are more reflective, I suppose, of 60s and 70s culture in multiple facets, films that are dealing more with issues like race. Again, I am thinking of America here, but the influence, obviously, is out there that that’s the way film is going, as a sort of context for Life of Brian, gritty realism, yeah. Anyway, just that, I’d sort of say that the other thing that we can obviously see that’s very much influencing this film, in the credits, anyway, is James Bond, Brian. His name is Brian.

Dr G 36:22
Yeah. I thought it was a great Shirley Bassey. Impression

Dr Rad 36:24
it is. I actually thought, I actually checked, because I was like, Oh, my god, is this Shirley? I

Dr G 36:28
don’t think it is. It wasn’t, no, it

Dr Rad 36:29
was like, some 16 year old. Oh,

Dr G 36:31
wow, yeah, yeah, no, but I picked up that reference straight away. I was like, Oh yes, I see where this is going. But I do like starting with the opening credits. Yeah, there’s a few things that I quite enjoyed about them, in terms of nods to Rome. Some of them are the Christian references. So we get the giant head of Constantine, which is smashing through everything. He won’t be alive for another few 100 years. So he is out of place. Good for him, though, we also see the Mouth of Truth, the bocca della Verita, yeah. Okay, you know, just like an odd, quirky thing. And the original purpose of that piece is unclear, and so it’s set up in Rome, and most famously in Roman Holiday. I

Dr Rad 37:22
was gonna say, I think I can tell you what the purpose is. The purpose is to have a delightful moment between Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in a reality comedy,

Dr G 37:31
Roman Holiday. Everybody, but that popularity of that particular stone, which we think might be the head of Neptune, maybe, but it has the open mouth, and it looks a bit like a theatrical mask as well. So the identification is not at all clear, and people line up to stick their hand in the thing and whatnot. And we think it might be related to the Temple of Hercules, which is across the way. Okay, yeah, just across the square. But the fact that it’s there, I think is cute. I mean, it’s ancient, but we don’t know from when, but it’s a very visual symbol of Rome. Yes, well, so I imagine this is something that,

Dr Rad 38:07
again, particularly by this time period, because, again, Roman Holiday we came out in the middle of the 1950s

Dr G 38:12
Yeah, exactly. So this is something that, like, even if you didn’t know much about Rome, you’d never been there, you would have recognized it. Presumably you get some nods also to the Arch of Constantine as it’s going along. And

Dr Rad 38:23
I was like, wait a minute, he was the first Christian.

Dr G 38:27
And then the other part that I really enjoyed, and I’m sorry, Tiberius, but it’s the Prima Porta Augustus just whacked in there, which is on trend. That’s fine. You could easily have run into a statue like that in this period, maybe not in Judea. To me, this is,

Dr Rad 38:45
again, this is like, one of those things where I’m like, okay, yes, if we’re being super accurate a lot of these things, you’re like, anachronistic, not the right setting at all. But it doesn’t matter with Monty Python, because they are anarchic in the way that they play with things. And so I kind of feel like it’s one of those things where it’s like, well, of course,

Dr G 39:02
well, I think that’s fine actually, because one of the things that I think comes across in this, and you’ve touched on it earlier, yeah, is that because of their university education, their humor is both absurdist and for some considered too highbrow, like the references are just out of touch. You have to have already known a whole bunch of things to get them, which might be the very reason why you and I quite enjoy these kinds of films, because it’s like, they’re kind of full of little easter eggs for people who have studied history and are aware of some of this stuff. Because I’m like, I understand that these things are that are out of touch, but I also recognize them, and I’m excited to have seen them, and I know that at some point they had to decide what was going to be in there. Yeah, you don’t become an illustrator and an animator without making really clear decisions about what’s included and what’s not included, and so those choices really matter. And I love the way that this opening credit sequence sets us up really nicely for what is both. Both a historical light touch for people who get it and absolutely bonkers for people who enjoyed the Absurdism of it.

Dr Rad 40:07
Yes, yeah, and that’s the thing, like Spartacus credits are so memorable with all the bits and pieces of sculpture and statuary. I mean, it was such a big film, people who were seeing this would mostly, I think, be very familiar with that particular thing. And so, yeah, the way that they take that and then twist it, yeah.

Dr G 40:29
This leads me to, I don’t really have much to say about the nativity scene, like, it’s fine, it does its job, but I was focusing on, like, Where do I see Romans? And so then I end up at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, I

Dr Rad 40:39
would say I love the Nativity in the way that she’s like, well, what is he there?

Dr G 40:45
They’re like, Oh no. They take back all the gifts, and she’s like,

Dr Rad 40:47
Oh, wait, yeah, and the Virgin Mandy, I enjoy it. That’s, that’s, I suppose, one of those moments. So where we I can highlight something that would be considered problematic by these standards, but wasn’t considered maybe as problematic in the day is that there is a brief moment of blackface in that particular scene. There is. It’s very brief. And obviously it’s one of those things where, knowing Monty Python, it’s one of those things where I think it’s just because they play all the characters at the time, they wouldn’t have thought about it, whereas it might be different these days, obviously, in terms of both the makeup of the group, potentially, but also in how they would handle that kind of thing. But it’s one of those things where you could easily miss it because of the way that they’ve got the three wise men, yeah,

Dr G 41:29
the way the costumes are done. Yeah, yes, there is black face. So content warning, not ideal, to be honest, I’d

Dr Rad 41:35
actually never noticed it before, because their faces are so covered up, but because I was paying more attention, I suppose this time, I suddenly realized that, of course, it’s one of the Monty Python group who’s playing the three wise men. I just I’d never even thought about it before, because my attention is always on the Virgin panty.

Dr G 41:52
So Jesus’s servant on the mount. This is like the one time in this film where we we clock Jesus, the man himself.

Dr Rad 41:58
And I will note, it’s actually very unusual to have Jesus Christ shown directly in that when you think about again films like Ben Hur, they tend to avoid it just like a shaft of sunlight, yeah, like, like a hand, or, like, you see the back of his head, or something like that. A lot of these, he’s

Dr G 42:18
like a dentist. We can’t show his face on television.

Dr Rad 42:22
Nine out of 10 dentists recommend, but I don’t, because they’re owned by a company that does on animals. It happens, but it’s unusual, although, of course, again, there was kind of like a bit of a slew of Jesus stuff that was coming out at this point in time. The biggest hit, obviously, being Jesus Christ Superstar. So superstar. So it just depends what you’re looking at, I suppose. But Jesus Christ Superstar is something that people would have seen, obviously, in the theater. Okay?

Dr G 42:50
So he does make his appearance, and he’s going to increasingly make his appearance in cultural representation from this point onwards as well. So we do get to get a glimpse of Jesus. He is saying things that he is purported to have said, so they don’t change his script. But the real focus of this whole scene is what is essentially British class, absolutely infighting at its best, where right at the back of the crowd there is some quibbling going on about what is being said and then how it’s being said, and then people starting to insult each other in various particular ways. And you can tell who’s supposed to be the upper class, and you can tell who’s supposed to be middle class, and you can tell who’s supposed to be working class from the ways in which they engage with each other. Yeah,

Dr Rad 43:39
so we’ve got Mr. And Mrs. Gregory the upper class rather, rather.

Dr G 43:45
And I think what’s great is that there’s a lot of mishearing of the of the sermon itself. Blessed are the cheese makers? Okay, we got

Dr Rad 43:53
Mr. And Mrs. Big nose, who are meant to be like the up and coming middle class and then Mr. Cheeky working class. So in the bickering, as you say, there’s the mishearing of stuff, but funnily enough, it actually highlights something which is hugely relevant to historians, which is, where did the Gospels get their material? How reliable are eyewitnesses? Yeah,

Dr G 44:13
and this is a huge challenge, because as far as we can date the Gospels. So these are the four books which are considered to be interconnected with each other and accredited to different people, but seem to have been written together. Perhaps the earliest date that people can put to them is probably about the 70s and 80s. CE.

Dr Rad 44:34
I think even, I think even 60s has been given for one of them, just one of them. I think, I think Mark from memory, which

Dr G 44:40
we’re talking Well, after, oh, yeah, like a good generation or so

Dr Rad 44:44
absolutely. And that’s the earliest, as you say, in most people, earliest that

Dr G 44:48
people were willing to accept based on the evidence. Yeah. So if you can mishear things when you’re at the venue, in the moment, I mean, just think about when you’re out and about or you. Go somewhere and you’re like, Excuse me, or you’re like, you turn to the person they say that all the time, or you’re at an event and you turn to somebody like, what did they just say? And the amount of misreporting and the mishearing that happens, generally speaking, the idea that there’s some sort of coherency to these texts is perhaps the biggest question we should have

Dr Rad 45:20
absolutely and I mean, even I’ve actually read. I was reading in preparation for this. Some people who identify as Christian, who teach this kind of material, as in, like, teach about historical Jesus and that sort of thing. And even they were saying that Life of Brian also kind of highlights one of those things, which is, how on earth were the three wise men supposed to have followed a star to figure out what tiny little manger somebody was in. There obviously are elements to these stories which don’t make like a logical sense, and that’s not necessarily what they’re obviously meant to be doing, just the same way that life of Ryan isn’t meant to be providing a super historically accurate version of Judea. What do you mean? This

Dr G 46:03
is clearly what was going on. I mean, there are Roman soldiers in attendance at this sermon. So I think for me, this was the key part of the reason why I noted down this scene at all. Yeah, because they’re standing around and they’re just sort of glancing over their shoulder and shaking their heads while the class warfare plays itself out in the background, and they only start to intervene when it comes to a physical altercation, when people start trying to punch each other, and then they’re like, Okay, break it up. But

Dr Rad 46:32
I think that the hilarious thing, of course, is we start to see, obviously, that whole idea of it’s what people make of it that’s funny in that when they think they’ve heard Blessed are the cheese makers. They say, well, obviously they don’t just mean the cheese makers. They mean manufacturers of any sort of dairy product.

Dr G 46:51
It’s not meant to be taken literally,

Dr Rad 46:52
yeah, and all the classic ones, where we get a lot of classic lines, you know? Oh, Blessed are the meek. Oh, that’s nice, because they get so little, I have such a hard time.

Dr G 47:03
From there, I jump ahead to the stoning scene, which I think might be the next scene. Anyway, it

Dr Rad 47:07
is because, of course, the virgin Mandy and Brian, they decide,

Dr G 47:11
they decide to leave the sermon of the mountain because it is getting out of hand in the background with the fights that are happening. So they decide that they’re going to attend the local stoning instead. And wouldn’t you know that there’s a whole bunch of bureaucratic rules around Stoney, and it’s really quite unfortunate, because women are forbidden to participate. And what this has led to is an underground market for fake beards so women can dress up as men and then attend stonings. And I suppose the part of the humor here, which is, in a way, quite parallel to the way that ancient humor operated as well, if we think about Greek comedy, sure is that we’ve got Monty Python, a male comedic troupe dressing up as women who are dressing up as men to attend stoning. So the layers upon layers of this kind of the drag, meta drag moments that are happening here, I

Dr Rad 48:14
think it allows the voices to be funnier, because then they can do the whole high pitched imitation of a woman. Are

Dr G 48:21
they ready with women here. Apologies. I mean, if you’re listening, I mean, we’re obviously just doing the film as we’re doing it as we analyze. So this puts me in mind of the way that ancient Greek comedy often sets up some of these things, and certainly, if we think about English traditions of comedy as well, this is very much something that Shakespeare would have lent into as well. Definitely the way in which characters try to hide their identity, by assuming the dress of another gender and then having to maybe go into hiding again, all of this kind of thing we have seen. It’s very English and in that sense, also very ancient. So I quite enjoyed that aspect of this scene. I note that there are some Roman soldiers there as well. They don’t seem to be quite as impressive as some of the other Centurions. They seem to be more low level infantry, and they just watch as the crowd eventually turns on the priest who is leading the stoning,

Dr Rad 49:25
which, and this is, I think, one of the things that I sort of lighted on as being the funny moment, because I love John Cleese’s priest. But again, the humor is so much that he is meant to be a kind of British bureaucrat slash schoolmaster type of figure in the way that he deals with the crowd, oh, there’s always one, and making sure that rules are being followed and that sort of thing. The way that he is dressed is very anachronistic. The idea of a stoning actually even taking place, is very debatable in terms of historical accuracy. It might seem like something you. SPECT in a biblical era film, but it is actually really uncertain whether such things would have been taking place in Jesus’s time. There’s like these weird references where it’s almost like they’re talking about stoning, but it’s almost like, are they saying that zonings actually happen? Or is this or are they just making a reference, because could maybe happen. It’s very unclear, but yeah, definitely highly debatable, but the fact that he is wearing something that’s so overly religious, again, kind of taps into criticisms that are made of certain Jewish groups in this society, of trying to advertise their piety, perhaps by wearing particular types of clothing. So I believe the Pharisees are sometimes critiqued by other Jewish people for overly advertising their dedication to religion and the type of clothing that they wear. So even though it’s anachronistic, it kind of potentially is highlighting that about this particular character. Yeah,

Dr G 50:55
and certainly, I think when we think about religious dress, there is a sense in the ancient world and even today, that the visual distinction is one of the ways in which you establish the authority of the Church, regardless of which church it might be. So style of dress and being visually recognizable from a distance is super important. And John Cleese is a tall man, and he’s wearing a very tall hat in this scene, which makes him even taller than he needs to be. So he definitely does stand out. So I’m

Dr Rad 51:25
guessing that your next scene that you liked was, of course, the children’s matinee.

Dr G 51:29
So in the lead up to that, though, yeah, I mean, yes, definitely the children’s matinee at the arena, which is a horrifying sort of take on, like, what is gladiatorial combat and the games of the hunt and things like that, as if they might be okay for children while people are dragging bits of meat out of the arena. But important in the lead up to this moment is the moment that Brian understands that his father is a Roman Ah,

Dr Rad 51:55
yes, okay, see, I didn’t think you’d talk about this one because there are no Roman characters present until, but till the end, it does become

Dr G 52:04
important later on, so as a Roman reference, but also like that happens in their home. So they and there is a Roman there. That’s true, yeah, they return home from the stoning and find that there is a Roman Centurion in their house. Brian’s bit put out by that, and his mom’s like, well, you know, maybe you shouldn’t be so worried about those sorts of things, because maybe your dad was a Roman so this is like an earth shattering revelation for Brian to learn that his father was a man called Nautius Maximus, and he understood understands in that moment that perhaps his life isn’t what he thought it was. It certainly calls into question, what has ever what was happening in the nativity scene with the Virgin mangy? Yes,

Dr Rad 52:54
well, even his name. I mean, I didn’t actually know this, but the last name Cohen, whilst it is quite a common name. Now, for people who have Jewish backgrounds, it actually indicates priest like, if you have the last name Cohen, your ancestors, presumably at one point, were from one of the priestly families. So it’s obviously not only a common Jewish name nowadays, which I’m sure is what they were playing on a little bit there, but it also has this connection to a very special group within that Jewish community that were setting this movie in and Brian was just chosen because, apparently that was the name that the Monty Pythons like to give to anyone who was seen as being very ordinary and kind of a bit stupid. Well,

Dr G 53:34
his character does live up to that in some respects. So he finds out his father is Nautius Maximus, and this puts him into a little bit of a tailspin. He makes a quip about his nose being Roman, and me like that. Explains

Dr Rad 53:53
I’m a Hebe, a Kike, a Red Sea pedestrian.

Dr G 53:58
And so, you know, he has this realization which frustrates him. It doesn’t really he doesn’t seem fixated beyond the fact that he’s noticed that there’s a Roman Centurion there because he wanders off because he’s now he’s got his own existential issues to deal with. But it turns out that his mother is also entertaining the Roman troops in a sexual way, perhaps, and she does make the point that they perhaps owe more to the Romans than he realizes, yeah, and he doesn’t seem to clock what that means, no, but the audience is allowed to see through that sort of veil and get a sense that this is a difficult life for her, yes, and that the Romans are part of the oppressive structures that she is navigating personally, while the province of Judea is navigating at large. Yes, absolutely. So yes, that leads us to the arena my favorite.

Dr Rad 54:53
So the subtitle children’s matinee is obviously, again, a play on something from British culture. Yeah. Dear the children’s madness that we provided pantomimes and theater and that sort of thing. I actually love this, though, because you do tend to get, I think, quite glorified, obviously, images of the arena in your more traditional epics. And this is kind of looking at, well, what happened when it was just an ordinary Saturday?

Dr G 55:21
And it’s like the arena isn’t particularly full. There are Brian’s there trying to sell some snacks, which, uh, he’s told that they’re just Roman tat.

Dr Rad 55:32
But again, even, like, even the types of things that he’s trying to sell, like the the wolf sniffles and that kind of stuff that, again, is kind of a play on the main evidence that we have of Roman food, which is typically by the elite, for the elite. So they are these ridiculous delicacies that we have preserved for us. And we, when we look at the recipe thing, we’re like, Oh my God. What you know the Romans love to think of all these new kind of delicacies, which, similarly to these days, I suppose, had to do with what was rare, what was hard to procure, and and so they did kind of eat sometimes things that we would look at as being absurd, but that would have been the very, very elite who were all caught up in this desire to impress one another. The average person would have been eating far more basic but

Dr G 56:23
I do like the idea that it’s playing into the idea of stadium culture and the sort of snacking that goes on there. But the arena is like the original Stadium in this sense. And so it makes sense that if you’re there and you’re out in the sun and you’ve been there for a few hours, you’re probably peckish, yeah, it would not be beyond imagination that nobody would be trying to sell you

Dr Rad 56:45
some just maybe not quite the fair that Brian is selling. But yeah, this

Dr G 56:49
is a super important scene for Brian, though, because it’s when he finally gets to meet the People’s Front of Judea love, and he’s already seen one of the members, at least when he was at the sermon of the mount, and because he spied Judith off in the distance, and was kind of like, and she was engaged in a very sort of intellectual conversation with another member of the group, yes,

Dr Rad 57:14
where they ridiculing my Jesus.

Dr G 57:18
And he’s seen her, he’s taking a look at her and being like, I’ve got a crow. And so it’s in this moment that he gets to meet her, because members of this group are attending the arena, mostly to criticize it and to lampoon people that they’ve exiled from their group or have defected to a different group. Spears, all of these people seem to be swilling around this idea that in order to get out from under the oppression of the Romans, they need to find a way to eliminate the powerful structures at play that are ruining the province so they can claim it back as their own.

Dr Rad 57:57
And this is the kind of thing that I like about Monty Python, because they’re making fun of every single class that they come across. So they make fun of the working class, they make fun of the middle class, they make fun of the upper class like no one is off limits because it’s really about institutions and authority that they are. That’s who they’re taking aim at really a lot of the time. So but I do, I just love their take on the trade unions. You’re like, you have to really hate the Romans to join our group, but I do,

Dr G 58:25
all right, we’re in and so this is the moment that Brian, you know, joins one of these groups, and he’s led into a new world. And this is on the back of him finding out about his own Roman heritage. So he’s running away from that in some respects, and fighting against it. And can he prove to himself, you know, how loyal he is to the local cause? Yeah, and

Dr Rad 58:50
this is, this is where we get into that interesting conversation, I suppose, about the presence of Rome in this area. So it’s hard to completely, I think, understand Jesus’s death at this distance, particularly because, as we talked about, the Gospels are written sometime after and they’ve obviously got a very particular agenda in mind. Even the Roman sources that mention Jesus Christ are again written a couple generations later, decades later. So whilst I definitely believe that there was a person who identifies as Jesus, it’s really hard to know I think exactly what was happening, but I don’t necessarily think that, as I said to before, I think it’s there’s often a lot of factionalism in this area, and there’s a lot of internal tension. And actually, I feel like it’s some time later that we get more anti Roman, more widespread anti Roman sentiment. And even then, it’s not universal and it’s not unified. I’m sort of thinking of in the sort of 60s and 70s, where we get the first udayan revolt. That’s when we tend to see really anti Roman sentiment springing up. But it’s not universal in Jesus’s lifetime. I’m not really sure. And I’m not an expert in this period, obviously, but I’m not really sure how widespread the anti. Roman sentiment would have been. It flares up a little bit under Caligula, because Caligula is a bit of a douche towards towards certain things that they hold dear. But otherwise, I’m really not, I’m not sure.

Dr G 1:00:09
I think this gets into the broader question of the history of the whole region, and so I’m not going to give too much away about something that comes up later in the film. I think we’re almost there, yeah, sure. But having thought about like we think about the layered history of this region, yes. And this area, broadly, what is now known as the Middle East, is considered, in many respects, cradle of civilization. This is where we understand agrarian culture to develop in a profound way. What about 6000 6000 7000 years ago? So this is an area that has always been populated. It has always had a multitude of societies. And this group that sits along this eastern edge of the Mediterranean are known for being traders. So the Punic peoples come from the Phoenician peoples. Yeah, the Phoenicians are just to the north of this region. But it’s not the case that the people to the south are not also traders. They are plenty of archeological evidence to suggest that there are social structures at play, that there is trading at play, that they are very involved in the broader Mediterranean community in which they sit. The Romans are just another player within this in that respect. So the idea that the Romans are necessarily terrible depends very much on how the Romans are behaving,

Dr Rad 1:01:44
and sometimes they can be behaving in ways that works for the people that live in that region.

Dr G 1:01:50
And in this time period, we are not yet at the conquest of the area by the Romans. No, we are certainly at a period of high levels of influence by Rome? Yeah, definitely. They’re doing some imperialism, for sure, sure, but they are not necessarily trying to wipe people out. No, and they do not have full control of this area, no,

Dr Rad 1:02:13
and that’s exactly it, like there’s and they’re not going to for quite some time. No, that’s what I mean. Like, I feel like there’s it. There’s more tension between various groups in this area. And I don’t just mean within Judea. I mean also more wider

Dr G 1:02:27
this whole area is, is complex already, the part of which we suffer from, I think, as historians who specialize in Rome, is that we are not Near Eastern specialists, and there are Near Eastern specialist, and we should get some of them on the show. We should talk about that region, because there is a lot going on here, and this, this film, is kind of touching on some of it. And I think maybe inadvertently, because I’m not sure how much Monty Python I know about some of I

Dr Rad 1:03:00
think they did a lot of research, but it’s the kind of material that they would have access to in the 1970s it’s obviously different scholarship, different time, and I don’t know how deep and they were influenced, definitely, I think, by more medieval things as well, like medieval passion plays as well as, obviously contemporary stuff. But even, I think, in terms of understanding this area, one of our major sources to sort of focus on relations between the people of this area and the Romans is, of course, Josephus. And Josephus is notoriously a hugely problematic source because he was someone who was captured by the Romans, or so he claims, during the first Judean revolt, and ends up becoming associated with flavians, because they are, of course, involved in the more troublesome time in Judea, with the first the destruction of the temple. Yeah, they are, and then they be, but then at around the same time that that happens, they obviously also become the next Imperial dynasty, everyone which allows them to allows them to control narrative somewhat. And Josephus is their client. He becomes like a Freedman of their family. And so his loyalties are all over the shop, all over the shop, and it’s so complex, like, it’s not to say that he’s like, Oh well, I’m I’m with the Romans. Now, he definitely doesn’t, but it’s so hard to tease out at any one moment what is going on in Josephus account of things, yeah,

Dr G 1:04:26
and his work is really important for our understanding of what is happening in this sort of Flavian period. And again, it’s that sort of thing where it’s like our sources just outside of the timeline, yes, that we’re interested in, like he does refer back to this period of history in the region totally, but it’s also the case that he wasn’t necessarily compos mentis there, no,

Dr Rad 1:04:49
and he’s also Jewish. He’s not Christian, so Jesus is going to mean something different to him. Anyways, yeah, it’s just a very, very complicated source to use. And. Yeah. Well, we

Dr G 1:05:01
love our complexities. We do. This leads us to the Latin scene.

Dr Rad 1:05:05
Okay. Now this is a scene that I laugh at whilst crying, as I have had so many, so many issues of Latin over the years.

Dr G 1:05:13
So I think one of the things that came out maybe on Twitter a few years ago, was like, you can tell the difference between a classic student and an ancient history student from their favorite from their favorite scene in Life of Brian. Yes, because the classic students will pick the Latin scene and the ancient historians will pick, well, What have the Romans ever done for us 100%

Dr Rad 1:05:33
and I am 100% true to that. The What have the Romans ever done for us is my favorite, but

Dr G 1:05:38
the Latin scene really does some special things. And I think it does some special things for classic students in particular, because it basically replicates the British education system for teaching classics to students at that time. Yes, yeah, in that moment. And so the play seems to be that Brian is put up to this moment by the People’s Front of Judea. They’re like, You got to prove your loyalty you want to be part of this group, you know, you’ve got to go and write a message on the Roman palace. Romans go home. Yeah. So Romanos

Dr Rad 1:06:12
ahaan rocks

Dr G 1:06:17
up and he’s he’s painting in big red letters. Romanes eunt domus and it’s kind of like twilight. He doesn’t realize that some Roman soldiers are marching up behind him, and they kind of watch him, and then they start correcting his grammar. They’re like, people call the Romans, They go to the house? and I was like, What are you doing? And then it goes through all of this thing where they’re trying to basically inculcate the rules, you know, like, you know, will it be accusative, you know, to place, it’s the locative, you know, blah, blah, blah, on all of these sort of like crazy grammatical terms, which you would only ever encounter if you had had to study Latin. Yes, it ends up being that they end up changing the phrase to Romani ite domum. Romans go home, and then they tell him that he has to paint it 100 times, which is one of those sort of classics of like the school system, where it’s kind of like you now have this really repetitive, boring task on your hands, and he does do it, like he takes him all night, but he Brian finishes this task. But you do get that sense that the play here is on the importance of form over everything else. This idea then gets linked to this Roman fetish for mindless punishment, which is something that runs through this whole film as well. And then as soon as Brian completes this task, it’s like there’s been a changeover of the group, and new guards show up. Don’t realize that this has been a task that has been set by the Romans to Brian. Look at what he’s written on the wall, and it’s huge, and it’s all over it, and then he has to run away very, very quickly to get himself out of trouble,

Dr Rad 1:07:58
yeah. Which I think, as you say, this perfectly highlight the educational background of the Monty Python group and the way that they would have had to study Latin because of the type of school they went to, which, again, is kind of interesting, because in the 60s, there had been a big shake up of the British education system, and there were definitely people that by the time that They, I suppose, were going through their education, there were definitely schools that were breaking with the tradition of having to learn Latin, and that was maybe seen as something a little bit old fashioned. But the Monty Python group, because the nature of their education, definitely would have had to learn Latin and learn it this way. And in fact, it wasn’t just trying to think when they would have been at university. I suspect that for a lot of them, they actually would have had to have studied Latin in order to get into the universities

Dr G 1:08:45
that they went to. So I assume so as well. And it’s pretty clear from the way that this scene is done, that they understand Latin, yes.

Dr Rad 1:08:52
And you’re like, okay, that I never will,

Dr G 1:08:56
and that they have been educated in very particular way about it. Yes, exactly. So the idea that they’re giving that experience to Roman soldiers in itself is quite funny, absolutely. Yeah, so the People’s Front of Judea, my favorite. I don’t know if you’re gonna like what I have to say about them. So these are just one of the many groups, the PJ, PFJ, as they’re known, one of the many groups seeking to liberate the area from Roman control and oppression, which

Dr Rad 1:09:27
is what I think I find so funny about it, because it taps into what I think is accurate to this period. The factionalism might not have been in this exact way, and it might not necessarily been directly anti Roman, but I think the factionalism is kind of oddly accurate.

Dr G 1:09:39
Yeah, definitely. And I think we can see this in many movements where it’s like, you can have broadly similar goals and yet be pursuing it in very different ways. Absolutely, yes. And certainly there are times and I think this happens, particularly you see it in online culture, where the discussion is around. And leftist groups being more challenging to each other than they are to tackling the cause itself. Yes, and this kind of thing can be a real hindrance to getting things done. Absolutely. The People’s Front of Judea sits in this category really quite nicely. Yeah, they spend a lot of time talking and writing notes and minutes and whatnot. They have a plan to kidnap the wife of Pontius Pilate. That’s their plan. They’re going to enter through the underground heating system the hypercoast. Good on them. I quite like that. So you know, they’re playing into like, what do we know about what the Romans had? And then we get to What have the Romans ever done for us? Now I

Dr Rad 1:10:41
think I think I know what you’re going to say about this scene. Wow, I’m

Dr G 1:10:44
going to say it, and then you can tell me whether your assumption was correct. Okay, this is the classic justification of imperialism. I

Dr Rad 1:10:51
knew you were going to say that. Yeah, you’re right. It’s not accurate to the situation in this area. It’s

Dr G 1:10:57
not accurate to the situation, and it’s hugely problematic. And what we have is the English playing the oppressed people and then selling back to them the idea that they were civilized by the arrival of their oppressors. This is British imperialism writ large in a single scene, which is ironic in its placement in this film. And I don’t know that Monty Python necessarily are aware of it. Well,

Dr Rad 1:11:29
I think they probably are now. I think the thing is that, again, this is where context, I think, is important. I think what people broadly would have thought about Rome and the Roman Empire back in that time when they were making this film, is that they would have looked at Rome as the great civilisers As much as we might question that critique it now that’s with the benefit of over 40 years of hindsight and new scholarship and also people looking into things from the point of view of the people that do live in the provinces, looking at the archeology that comes out of that area, not privileging the Roman perspective. You know, there’s a lot that has happened in the last 50 years of academia that has enabled us to look at that scene and recognize that it’s not accurate that the Romans did not invent aqueducts, that there were roads before they came, and all of that kind of stuff. What I wouldn’t like. I obviously haven’t looked into it in the sense of saying there definitively was no academia out there that could possibly have disproven this. But I do think that I know enough to say that widely speaking, I feel like the point of view would have been way more positive in terms of imperialism, and Roman imperialism in particular, but that’s, that’s the way I kind of look at it. Yeah, I

Dr G 1:12:48
think there’s an interesting parallel to be drawn between the way that British imperialism justifies itself and the way that we now have British people justifying Roman imperialism within the context of this film. So I think that’s an interesting point of note. So the things that get mentioned as benefits of what the Romans have done for us, aqueducts, roads, medicine, sanitation, irrigation, education, wine, public baths and law and order. Now, objectively speaking, all of these are incorrect. Just as a point of note, all of these things predated Rome in the area,

Dr Rad 1:13:31
and Rome was not particularly sanitized. I mean, like sure they would have, they had certain aspects of their culture which may have been more hygienic than otherwise at that time in other places. But certainly, when you think about things like the bars, I think they would have just been germ soup. I was

Dr G 1:13:49
gonna say, are you calling into question my beloved cloacker maxima, yeah,

Dr Rad 1:13:53
sure. They had certain things like the aqueducts, which they adopted. I mean this. And this is the thing about the Romans. I think the thing about the Romans I think the thing about the Romans is that a little bit like America, I suppose, oh, that parallel again, they’re very good, I think, at adopting things and then rolling them out. They adopt things and because they ended up having control over wide amounts of territory, they can organize, like mass manpower, for example, or whatever, in order to build these things or create this infrastructure. It’s not that they came up with the original idea, and it may not be that they’re the only ones doing it, but once they’re in charge, I feel like they are relatively good sometimes at rolling it out when it’s in in their interest to do so to like, have an aqueduct or have a theater? Yeah.

Dr G 1:14:41
So I mean, notably, if we’re going to give the Romans any credit in this region, and we can, I suspect it is the fact that under Herod, there was an aqueduct constructed into the port city of Caesarea, Maritima, Caesar’s maritime port. And the reason for that is that there was no access to fresh water at that location, and there was still evidence of that ancient aqueduct, which was then sort of enhanced a few generations later. So that exists. So, yes, I mean, we could say that, you know, they brought some aqueducts, yeah, but they

Dr Rad 1:15:19
didn’t. They didn’t invent aqueduct. They didn’t invent paved rows. They did not invent wine. Law and order. I certainly did not

Dr G 1:15:26
invent wine. And arguably, it’s more likely that this region invented wine and irrigation. This is

Dr Rad 1:15:35
what I mean. I think the Romans are kind of like the inheritors, in the sense that they’re bringing the infrastructure, I suppose it’s in like, the ability to act on it at that moment in time, yeah.

Dr G 1:15:45
And so I suppose this is the idea of the increasingly militaristic influence of Rome in this area, yeah. And the fact that they’ve decided to go in, and people have not yet been able to throw them out or to throw them off. We

Dr Rad 1:16:00
obviously don’t know what would have been here if the Romans weren’t here. That’s not to say that the people in this area were incapable of doing such projects without the Romans. I just think it’s the Roman army, Roman slavery. Those systems mean that you can potentially have these large scale building projects, as sad as that is,

Dr G 1:16:24
indeed. And so they the PFJ decide that they’re going to enter through the Caesar Augustus Memorial. Sewer, excellent. And I do really love the scene where we get the footage of them entering, and it’s like they come through a floor mosaic lifting up a little leaf that’s covering somebody’s private parts. The Romans wouldn’t have bothered to have a leaf there in the mosaic. They would have just left it open. So that was a cute little nod, I think as well.

Dr Rad 1:16:52
See, this is where I love the kind of non Roman stuff, in a sense. So I love the fact that they encounter rival groups and they start fighting each other rather than concentrating on the task.

Dr G 1:17:03
Oh, yeah. So, I mean, the PFJ managed to run into this rival liberation group who have happy to dance people front, yeah, who have happened to have the same plan to execute on the same evening. Absolutely hilarious. And they all managed to kill each other inside the villa, and Brian’s the last one left standing when the Roman soldiers notice that anybody has infiltrated.

Dr Rad 1:17:28
And this, of course, brings us, I suppose, to one of the most notorious scenes, which is the Pontius Pilate scene. Oh,

Dr G 1:17:35
we’re calling it that, are we? I call it the biggest sticker scene. That’s right, yeah. I really liked this scene. I feel like I have an academic paper to write, because this scene is full of frescoes.

Dr Rad 1:17:48
Ah, okay, that’s what caught your eye. See, I was, as usual, very focused on Michael Palin, who is probably my favorite of the pythons. He is very good, and this is perhaps with his loose

Dr G 1:18:01
one of his star turns in this film as the most objectionable Roman, Pontius Pilate. And so Brian, having been arrested by the Roman guards and doing a bit of a tour of the jail, gets brought before Pontius Pilate himself. And this is where, in order to try and avoid punishment, Brian reveals his half Roman identity, yes. And he’s like, Well, my father is Nautius Maximus, at which point the Roman guard is like, convinced that this is a joke name. And Pontius Pilate is like, what are you talking about? And this leads the guard to say, well, you know, it’s a, it’s a joke name, like Biggus Dickus, or, yeah, and Pontius Pilate is like, Excuse me, because Dickus is a great friend of mine. And this scene is just, it plays out for like, you know, a good while. Yeah,

Dr Rad 1:18:56
it’s the accent that sells it as well, the way that Pontius Pilate has this absurd list. And of course, when we eventually meet him, bigger stickers will have an even more exaggerated speech impediment. And the lyric thing, of course, is that nobody can understand him, not even the Romans.

Dr G 1:19:12
Yeah, so people keep responding back to him as if he’s asked a different question. Which,

Dr Rad 1:19:16
Look, I get that because of someone who’s hard of hearing. I do do that sometimes, where I respond completely inappropriately, because I have 100% miss her what someone said to

Dr G 1:19:24
me, the joys of this podcast. So what is happening in the background with these frescoes is that they can be cross referenced quite distinctly to frescoes from the villa of mysteries. Oh, actually, you

Dr Rad 1:19:41
know what? I did notice that. I actually did notice it, and I totally forgot, you’re right, the red like the red, the red ones like so the red ones, the ones with the predominantly red color in the background.

Dr G 1:19:53
You know those red fresh skirts.

Dr Rad 1:19:56
But no, like it is the red color, the red background. Is what makes them so distinctive to me. And it’s

Dr G 1:20:02
not just the red background, it’s the fact that they’ve replicated key panels from that fresh Yeah. So yeah, I’ve started to go through and collate the parallels visually from the villa of mysteries for my own edification. Yeah, hi. I paused the film

Dr Rad 1:20:23
research. Hello, pot. It’s kettle here. Hi.

Dr G 1:20:29
So what I like about this is one it suggests that somebody on set knew enough. So this is like a little easter egg for people who know enough. Well, this

Dr Rad 1:20:40
would be where it would be curious for you, because I don’t know enough about the set design to know this. But as I said before, they did make use of the sets that were there for the TV series that have just been made. But I know that they what they describe the processes that they built their sets into those sets. So it would be interesting whether that was a set that already existed, or whether it was something that they, as you like, that they made their own. Yeah,

Dr G 1:21:06
yeah. So it makes me think I’m gonna have to go and watch what Zeffirellis. Yep, definitely go and have a watch. So, I mean, part of me thinks maybe not in zephyrellis, partly does seem too common, partly because the villa of mysteries is from Pompeii, so maybe doesn’t make a lot of sense, but also because of the potential time period and dating of these frescoes. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, that was besides the things that are very funny about this scene, which I enjoy. It’s one of my favorites. I did get distracted with my Roman historian hat on,

Dr Rad 1:21:46
so I believe that there is a very random scene that comes after this one, which is, of course, the alien sequence. Oh,

Dr G 1:21:54
yes. Well, I didn’t include any notes on that because I was like, there were no Romans. Well, Brian

Dr Rad 1:21:59
is being pursued by the Romans, I guess in this chase sequence. Now, I’ve heard various explanations for this. So 1979 that’s around the time that Star Wars is coming out. So it’s possible that they’re referencing like, the, you know, mania for science fiction. I have heard that the pythons just didn’t know how to get Brian out of this situation where he’s like, running up a very tall building find someone working on the top of it and really can’t figure out how to get down. Instead of decided just to insert this. I also read an academic who felt that it was a play on a book and documentary which came out of Germany, and then, I think, was adapted into English, the Chariots of the Gods, showing the aliens sort of interfering with life on Earth. I’ve also heard that it’s meant to be some sort of allusion to Brian’s ascension. Oh,

Dr G 1:22:53
yes. I mean to me, that makes the most sense. Yeah,

Dr Rad 1:22:56
yeah. So to be honest, there are so many explanations of what is going on in here. I have to admit, I kind of would go with the Python explanation of they just didn’t know how else to get him out of here. Well, I

Dr G 1:23:07
mean, part of me finds that hard to believe. I mean, they put him there, I guess so.

Dr Rad 1:23:11
But yeah, it could. It could have been a play, obviously, on the idea of Jesus being taken into the heavens. This is Brian’s moment to do that. And of course, it happens in a ridiculous fashion, as everything does in Brian’s life, as opposed to Jesus’s life,

Dr G 1:23:25
certainly. And I mean, the key thing for Brian, I guess, and for the film, is that he does escape set back down in a slightly different location, which allows him to get back to Matthias’ house. Now, Matthias’ house, is where the People’s Front of Judea meet, yes,

Dr Rad 1:23:44
and hides so well.

Dr G 1:23:47
And unfortunately, it seems like the guards are just close enough to Brian to spot which house he goes into, which causes all sorts of trouble.

Dr Rad 1:23:57
And there is a very tiny scene, which I do appreciate, though, when the Romans are like, storming into the house, and you see, like, 1000 Roman soldiers storm fast into this tiny, little house.

Dr G 1:24:06
Yeah. And I like, I do enjoy this sequence, because I think it gives us a sense of one how much Rome does. Rome things where you’re like, okay, just always send all of the guards all the time. And it’s like, this is how they managed to dominate everybody. It’s through this sheer numbers. Yeah, impressive numbers. Yeah. And it also seems to be a play on the classic sort of, how many clowns can you fit in a car kind of joke? Exactly. Matthias house is not that large, and there are many men running into it.

Dr Rad 1:24:40
I love it.

Dr G 1:24:41
So this leads me, from a Roman historian perspective, I suppose, straight to the crucifixion. Okay, you’re

Dr Rad 1:24:52
gonna skip right over the nude scene and the he’s just, he’s not the Messiah. He’s just a naughty boy.

Dr G 1:24:57
It’s got nothing to do with the Romans. Oh. Haha, by all means. I mean, now’s your chance.

Dr Rad 1:25:03
Obviously, that this is one of my other favorite scenes. It’s also obviously gives us one of the most well known quotes, I think, from the scene. And the thing I’ve the reason why I find it interesting, and I thought you might as well, is that it’s probably the most woman heavy, even though the women in question is, in fact, Terry Jones Indra, but it kind of did maybe think about things a bit differently here. So basically, Judith and Brian hook up at this moment in time, and we get very big full frontal nudity from both Brian and Judith in this scene. But to be honest again, this is where I feel like Monty Python and just say general measles. Saying they kind of are maybe unintentionally accurate. Number one, I kind of think the way that they’re just so at ease with being nude in like a small space in a family situation. I think that kind of is how people would have had to have been in the ancient world, you know, just more at ease with nudity, more used to bodily functions and things happening around them. I think the the dirtiness of this world, the you know, the smallness of this world, you know that like the way that the average person lives, I think is actually kind of more accurate than the gleaming marble we tend to see in a lot of Roman epics. But I do also like the way that they are, again, playing up with a character that’s probably more familiar to modern audiences, in that the way that Brian and his mother have a relationship. It does seem to be playing on the trope of maybe the Jewish mother, the way that she’s disapproving, that sort of thing which we see in modern shows like The Nanny, that line coming out of that depiction of, again, like a very modern character, but put in an ancient world, definitely.

Dr G 1:26:40
And the the way in which that this is like the the climactic point for the Messianic journey, exactly

Dr Rad 1:26:51
so funny, the way that the crowd, and this is where we see the crowd reacting in ways where the pythons are making fun of prophets springing up and preaching on corners, and the way people are responding to them, and the way that Brian’s like, just think for yourself. This is essentially the message of Life of Brian, as far as the pythons were concerned. It’s about thinking for yourself. Yeah,

Dr G 1:27:12
so to backtrack slightly, how did Brian even get here? So the Roman troops went into Matthias’ house. Brian was trying to hide, but he was hiding on a little balcony outside. That balcony eventually gave way, and he ended up standing on a strip of various other sort of wise prophets who were sort of promulgating a crowd. So it’s a bit like people are on their soapbox and people are gathering around, you know, the person who’s talking, who they think is most interesting? Yeah,

Dr Rad 1:27:40
with my favorite one of and there shall be a time where all things will be lost, and the little bits and pieces will be very hard to find. And Brian

Dr G 1:27:50
ends up in this situation. He’s knocked somebody off their plinth. Now he’s in front of a crowd, and he starts sort of making some stuff up. And there are some biblical references in there, stuff that has been attributed. And then he sort of trails off because he’s really waiting for that coast to be clear of the Romans, to be able to get back into the house and all of that. So once he sees that the moment has arrived, he just sort of trails off and doesn’t reveal anything. And it’s the mystery that is set up by him not finishing a sentence that prompts people to start to follow him, because they want to know what the message is, yes, which, when he was completing his sentences was of no real interest to any of them, but because they can’t and they don’t know what is the next thing he’s going to say, they become obsessed with him. Start following him around. Anyway, he ends up with this huge crowd around him, and when he wakes up the next morning at mum’s place with Judith, he is unprepared for how many people are outside his house. Yeah,

Dr Rad 1:28:52
but the crowd scene, the interaction between Brian and the crowd and the Virgin Mandy and the crowd, is just hilarious. The whole idea of Yeah, thinking for yourselves, doing your own thing. And they’re all like, yes, we’re all individuals. I love it, and I kind of love to be as well. A bit later on, not not too long before the crucifixion scene, we also see, obviously, like the fetishizing of objects associated with Brian, the gourd and the sandal. And the way that you you see factions forming around these two different objects, which is exactly the kind of stuff you see happening in Christianity in real life. I mean, this is, you know what? Relics, 101, yeah, but, but also the idea that, like, tiny details about the faith are what cause factions to form within Christianity, and leads to a lot of bloodshed, to be honest, in the later Roman Empire, as people are fighting for their particular brand of Christianity and their particular interpretation of things, which I think is what still rings true, because obviously we still see that factionalism between Christian groups. It might not be quite as extreme, but we certainly still see different and not just Christianity. Obviously in other religions as well, there are obviously different groups which are sprung up, and we still see infighting between those groups. And that, again, is one of those things that I think is just kind of timeless, even the absurdity of the kind of ascetic that Brian accidentally knocks out of his hole, which, again, is kind of, I feel like an allusion to the Desert Fathers. I feel like there has to be an illusion. I

Dr G
feel like it must be, yeah, he gets very upset. The poor man who’s been out in the desert in his little hole for a long time keeping silent and eventually makes a sound, because Brian accidentally steps on his foot or

Dr Rad
something. But that’s exactly the kind of his vow of silence is over. Yeah. That’s exactly the kind of extreme esthetic behavior we end up seeing a bit later, I was gonna

Dr G
say they just this is a historical as far as where or where from, from a Christian perspective, certainly those sorts of figures don’t start to pop up until we’re in the depths of sort of like Christian belief on the rise.

Dr Rad
Totally. The things that they do are pretty extreme, pretty extreme, yeah, when they get to them, yeah, yes, now is not the time. No, all right, the crucifixion, the crucifixion, just one crossbears, yeah,

Dr G
well, you’ve alluded to it already. I really, I do love this, this sort of like the the empathetic bureaucrat, yeah, next crucifixion, good, out the door, line of the left one cross each next crucifixion, good, sort of plays out. And I was like, oh, there’s that sense in which you can also see the character, the bureaucrat here, sort of getting to the point where they’re kind of like, Oh no, that’s, that’s not okay. You know that has to do their job anyway, yeah, and just keeps doing their job. And this feeds in nicely to something that happens to Brian later, where he says to one of the Roman guards, as they’re putting his cross up, you don’t have to take orders. The guard immediately replies, I like orders. And I think for you, this is the moment where we also get the beautiful reference to Spartacus. Yes,

Dr Rad
absolutely, yes.

Dr G
And so as it turns out, one of the scenes that’s playing against this scene is that we’re back with bigger stickers and conscious

Dr Rad
who, to be fair, again, I’m just going to pipe in and say to be historically accurate, the reason why Pontius Pilate probably actually deserves a bad reputation is history is that he does not seem to have been very skilled at negotiating the Jewish cultural beliefs and laws and practices in this region. He does not seem to be very respectful of them, and therefore probably does deserve a poor reputation as a governor for the things that went down. And probably was not a very soft and cuddly person, but being played by Michael Palin, I love him.

Dr G
Yeah, look, and I don’t think the Romans would expect anything less from themselves in this situation than to enforce Roman attitudes and beliefs. Yeah, so the things that Pontius Pilate gets accused of probably all quite deserved. Yeah.

Dr Rad
I mean, it seems like yeah, he probably wasn’t the best person for the job at this point in time, which probably is kind of why things got out of hand with Jesus. But was he any different to any other Roman governor? Yeah? Like, I

Dr G
can’t see a timeline necessarily where a Roman governor wouldn’t have gone yeah. Obviously they need to be executed, yeah. And from a Roman perspective, Jesus is not someone special, no. And in this moment, this cross cutting scene in the sort of lead up to the crucifixion of Brian is this scene where Pontius Pilate has said that he will squeeze someone, he will save one of the of the people to be crucified. There’s apparently going to be 140 crucifixions as a special celebration, and one of them will be released. And the crowd just goes wild because they’re aware of his speech impediment, and they just offer him names that he’s going to mispronounce. Watcher. Is there a watcher? And so they just keep going on on this path, and eventually somebody suggests Brian, in which Yeah, conveniently also doesn’t work for the speech impediment, and a messenger does get sent to the site of the crucifixion like, you know, we need to release Brian. And Brian is currently distracted having, he’s in a chat with somebody else. I don’t know, he’s not across, but he is like, you know, and somebody hears this, and one of the Mr. Cheeky,

Dr Rad
yes, Mr. Cheeky, yeah. Mr. Cheeky, telling him that it’s all right, my brother’s gonna come and rescue me.

Dr G
And then they have this moment where a guard turns up and says, you know, we are to release Brian. And so then the people organizing the crucifixions are like, well, who’s Brian? I’m

Dr Rad
Brian, and so is my wife. I’m Brian.

Dr G
And so the parody of the Spartacus scene writ large absolutely to enjoy. But

Dr Rad
again, what is historically accurate is that Jesus was not alone at his crucifixion, and he certainly was not the only person to be penalized this way under the

Dr G
Romans. No, although apparently some of the initial critique. Of this film was that there were too many people getting crucified at one time. Absolutely.

Dr Rad
Look, I think, I don’t think the Romans would have generally crucified this many people at one time. But then again, if you think about the aftermath of Spartacus war, allegedly 6000 of the surviving slaves, 6000 that is, were crucified up and down the Appian Way, so they were capable of it. Oh, yeah.

Dr G
So yeah, this is basically the end of the film. It is

Dr Rad
where we get to Always Look on the bright side of life. Now this is this actually segues nicely to thinking about the fact that this scene, in particular, I think, was one of the ones that aroused a lot of controversy when this film was released. So it did do very well this film, it made a huge amount of money. I think it was something like $60,000 in its first five days. I presume that means $60,000 in like 1970s money. It did do very well at the box office, but it was considered controversial by some people, and it was banned in certain areas. So it was banned in Norway. It was banned in the Republic of certain parts of the Republic of Ireland. I believe it was even maybe banned in parts of America. I think so. Definitely. It was a controversial film, and this particular scene was notorious because people felt like they were making fun of the crucifixion and, you know, Jesus’s death, something that’s hugely important for Christians. So if you, if you watch, and we will link this in the show notes, because it’s fairly available on YouTube, if you watch the BBC Two appearance of John Cleese and Michael Palin on Friday night, Saturday morning, which I have to say, my favorite part of watching that whole show was the fact that that show starts with a couple in bed having sex, and they turn to watch the program. That’s like the opening credits. But anyway, they were basically responding to criticisms from Malcolm Muggeridge and an Anglican bishop called Mervyn Stockwood, and the thing that they kept coming back to was that crucifixion scene. They felt like it was making light of death. They felt like it was really attacking a core moment for their belief. With the crucifixion, they kept coming back to that scene so you can kind of see how some people react, if you want to watch that YouTube thing, my favorite part of that whole episode is that, in terms of standing the test of time, those men don’t come across well nowadays the way that they I mean, you want to talk about being central to like Western culture and British culture, the way that they prioritize Christianity and that as being the basis for Western culture, the only thing that ever inspired anybody, completely ignoring the way that Christianity was forced upon people at the point of being burnt to death, completely ignoring all the negative conflict that has come with religions like Christianity, but it doesn’t stand the test of time. What you can see as well on YouTube, which I will also link, is the not the Nine O’Clock News sketch starring a very young Rowan Atkinson. I was gonna say that was one of his first Yeah, where? So about two weeks after that, initial debate appeared on television, not the Nine O’Clock News decided to do their own sketch making fun of the debate, where they have a bishop played by Rowan Atkinson coming on. He’s just made a movie about the life of Christ, and he’s being accused of lampooning Monty Python, particularly our Lord on high, John Cleese. And that might be a good moment, I suppose, to wrap up. Dr, G, yeah. Look, I

Dr G
think so. So I would encourage you, if you haven’t watched this film, to go and do so. It’s currently on Netflix, but it might be in other places as well. It is definitely worth thinking about as you also enjoy it. And yeah, I’m just in my mind, I’m just, I’m excited about the prospect of learning more about this historical period from non Roman material and and I think that’s one of the challenges that we always face as Roman historians, is that there is that element of the victor leaves the record, and that has definitely flow come down to us, and we can see it manifesting in this film. But there’s also like things to think about, in terms of imperialism generally, and ways in which we engage in decolonizing as we go. So yeah, and

Dr Rad
look, I think the thing that will stand the test of time about this film, I say, I do like that. It’s probably a bit more I lived in kind of Roman world, and I actually do like the fact that a lot of the characters we’re engaging with are more ordinary, I suppose, than a lot of the people we see in films about ancient Rome, who tend to be more emperors and generals. And we actually get to know these sorts of characters who, funnily enough, probably were the kinds of characters that. Jesus was moving around. You know, amongst us, that’s kind of why Brian and his mother are so perfectly placed to have that sliding doors kind of life with Jesus Christ. They’re exactly the kind of people that he probably would have been associating with. So I do kind of like that. But I think the thing that really stands the test of time is the fact that the characterizations like we all know people like the characters that Monty Python plays even 50 years later, including one that we didn’t really mention, but the leper, the X leper, without so much as a buy your leave, the people like that, who are kind of timeless characters, I think, and I think that’s what makes Life of Brian stand out so much, but perhaps also the fact that it is a bit of a riff on biblical epics, which some people might still be very familiar with, and I obviously number amongst those people.

Dr G
Well, it has been an absolute joy to learn more about this film with you.

Dr Rad
It certainly has, let’s say, arrivederci to Brian. His name is Brian.

Thank you for listening to this special episode of the partial historians, you can find our sources sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes. Our music is by Bettina Joy De Guzman. You too can support our show and help us to produce more fascinating content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes, and you get to make suggestions for future episodes. This one was one of our Patreon requests. So of course, we’d like to thank all of our wonderful crew over at Patreon and also our ko fi supporters for helping us to cover the costs of making the show and taking it in new directions. However, if you’re experiencing a serious lack of sisters, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review that goes for our book as well. You can now purchase Rex, the seven kings of Rome, right from our Patreon store as well as through Gumroad and Amazon. Until next time we are yours in ancient Rome, you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Transcribed by https://otter.ai