 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975, 91 min.) written by Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Eric Idle & Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones & Michael Palin. directed by Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones Trapped in Castle Anthrax “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”  It isn’t
often that a parody of a
myth attains mythic status itself, but this is exactly the case with
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
There
are those who consider this quite simply the funniest movie ever made.
These
folks can not only quote extensively from the film, but can and do hold
sporadic, quasi-liturgical celebrations over food and wine (and other
substances), during which they amuse their friends with recitations of
dialogue
from the movie. If we were mythologists, we might arguably call these
folks acolytes of the movie and their
recitations rituals. Yet the movie itself is unprepossessing. It packs very little emotional wallop. The protagonist, if it can be said to have one, is “King Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, king of all the Britons, sovereign of England.” Despite this elaborate self-naming, Arthur is a king without a kingdom (or even a horse!) who roams the countryside in a blind confidence of royal entitlement, never seeming to notice that he is always on the outside looking in. He demands obedience from subjects who reject his rule. He spends long moments of exasperating discourse outside the walls of castles that he cannot enter. He engages in acts of knightly valor against an opponent who will not even admit that he is wounded. He embarks upon a fruitless quest ordered by a cranky God for a sacred object that he never attains. In the end, he is identified and accused by one of the few individual females to appear in the film and carted off to jail for the crime of murdering a historian. The British police force may condemn Arthur for the crime of murdering history, but modern audiences hail Graham Chapman (King Arthur) and the other Monty Pythons (John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin) for what Carl Jung might characterize as the “uncanny sense of identification” the movie affords. Jung attributes the staying power of a particular myth to how well it provides members of its originating culture with this sense of identification with the workings of their own inner lives. We might ask ourselves what is it in late twentieth/early twenty-first century western culture that accounts for a film that is a parody of the Arthurian myth outstaying in power the many cinematic interpretations of Arthur that are played straight. Camelot, Excalibur, First Knight, Perceval, The Fisher King, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade all enjoyed varying degrees of success in terms of Hollywood box office and critical notice. But only Monty Python and the Holy Grail has entered into the twentieth-century western mythos itself. The irreverence of the Monty Python troupe provides a way for our media-savvy, educated movie-going audiences to have our cake and eat it too. Co-directors Gilliam and Jones provide just enough images of haunting loveliness in the film that we can immerse ourselves in the beauty of myth, exalted these days by Joseph Campbell and his followers as the key to following one’s bliss. At the same time, the filmmakers – and here we include all members of the Monty Python group, equally credited as writers of Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- give us enough flippancy that we can stand above and beyond it all. We can view with a jaundiced eye, as we have been taught by Rene Girard and his followers, the violence and less than exalted mechanisms that underlie the splendor of our greatest myths. Out of the Mysts England, 932 AD. Gray mists swirl in the foreground. From the far-away distance comes the sound of hoof beats. Music, heavy with portent, fills the background. The hoof beats come closer. The mists part. Out of the vapors, as out of the legends of time, ride Arthur, King of all the Britons, and his loyal servant Patsy. It is impossible to view the opening images of Monty Python and the Holy Grail without feeling the familiar pull of the old Arthurian lore. “Myths grow like weeds around the great historical figures of the past,” Sir James Frazer declared. The real Arthur might have been no more than a tribal leader who temporarily united Picts, Saxons and Bretons in a loosely restored Roman alliance against the barbarian hordes at the tail end of the crumbling empire. His real existence does not matter; we can still recognize a thrill of anticipation at the signs of his coming – the expected hoof beats, the swirling mists that part to reveal the Once and Future King. “Who goes there?”
“It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, sovereign of all England. I have ridden for many days…” “What, on horses?” “Yes, of course.” “No you haven’t.” “What do you mean?” “You’re not riding horses, you have two halves of a coconut that you are clapping together to make a sound like horses.” “No I’m not.” “Yes you are.” What, No Horses?  My sister
and I exchanged notes
recently, and we both recalled the disappointment we felt the first
time we
viewed the opening scene of Monty Python
and the Holy Grail and saw that there was to be no kingly steed, just a
manservant clapping together coconuts for a sound effect. Not only was
the
production too cheap to afford horses (or so we imagined), but the
characters
deliberately broke the suspension of disbelief for a lengthy discussion
on how
coconuts came to be used to provide the sound of hoof beats. My sister
gave up
at this point and did not watch the movie in full for another twenty
years. The
coconut hoof beats dashed my own hopes for a deeply felt blend of
heroic myth
and comic interpretation – the comedy was there, but where was the
emotion? I
was disappointed that this was to be no more than an extended Monty
Python comedy
sketch, funny as their sketches always were but still lacking the
essential
emotional depth I personally require from any representation of
myth. The wider audience disagreed. The discussion about what type of swallows could carry coconuts and still stay airborne signaled the start of precisely that level of absurdity expected and desired in a Monty Python interpretation of revered source material. Two years later, in The Life of Brian, the Monty Python group was to attempt its own interpretation of the source material for the Christian gospels. Precisely because the gospels are revered as essentially true rather than essentially mythic, they were not able to make the hero of the gospel material, Christ himself, the protagonist of their film. They discovered, in the controversy surrounding the announcement of the making of a comic version of Christ’s life, that the public has limits to its tolerance for iconoclasm even from its fools and comics. The Monty Pythons had to interpret the Christian story obliquely, through the eyes of a quasi-Messiah, Brian, whose life paralleled that of Jesus. No such caution was necessary with Arthurian myth, given that Arthur’s true existence is irrelevant to the impact of Arthurian lore on western culture. With a Jaundiced Eye “Who’s that?” “I dunno, must be a king.” “How can you tell?” “He hasn’t got shit all over him.” The mythic hero, notes poet Stephanie Mallarme, leads a short but brilliant life. His face is fair, his hair shines like the sun, and he cuts a figure of astonishing beauty as he makes his way in fine raiment through a civilization caught in crisis and dissolution. King Arthur lives up to Mallarme’s description in this quotable exchange between two peasants. The tenth century of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is nasty and brutish. The streets are muddy walkways, the people poor and dirty. Plague stalks the land. King Arthur himself fades to the background during the enduringly popular plague scene: [Enter the Dead Collector, intoning mournfully.] “Bring out yer dead.
Bring out yer
dead.”
[The Dead
Collector
glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the BODY with a
whack of his club.] “Here’s one.” [Young man puts a BODY of an older man on the cart.] “That’ll be ninepence.” “I’M NOT DEAD!” “What?” “Nothing, nothing at all. Here’s your ninepence.” “I’M NOT DEAD!” “ ‘Ere. He says he’s not dead.” “Yes he is.” “I’M NOT!” “He isn’t.” “Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.” “I’M GETTING BETTER.” “No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.” “Well, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.” “I DON’T WANT TO GO ON THE CART.” “Oh, don’t be such a baby.” “I can’t take him.” “I FEEL FINE.” “Oh, do me a favor.” “I can’t.” “Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won’t be long.” “I promised I’d be at the Robinsons’. They’ve lost nine today.” “Well, what’s your next round?” “Thursday.” “I THINK I’LL GO FOR A WALK.” “You’re not fooling anyone, you know…. Isn’t there anything you could do?” “I FEEL HAPPY. I FEEL HAPPY.” “Ah, thank you very
much.”
“Not at all. See you on Thursday.” “Right.” Myth often deals with a fantastic or larger-than-life solution devised by a culture to deal with a particular social problem. Better nutrition and vastly improved public health has given us moderns a social problem unknown in earlier times: greater and greater numbers of people are living longer and longer while requiring extended care. In the last ten years we have even heard the term “sandwich generation” applied to those baby boomers who are raising children at one end and caring for infirm parents at the other. Is it possible to read this plague scene as a mythical imagining of our twentieth and twenty-first century plight in dealing with the elderly? Not dead yet, Father? Be a good sport and give over, let us put you away and relieve ourselves of the inconvenience of your care. Don’t want to play, Mum? Perhaps a little euthanasia will speed you on your way. Did the Monty Pythons consciously intend this reading of the scene? There is no way of telling. But the casual brutality of young against old, strong against weak plays beautifully to this interpretation. The Valiant Warrior Ad Absurdum The glory of hand-to-hand combat is a constant theme in myth. Mythic heroes fight valiant foes with picturesque names, as in the film where King Arthur and Patsy ride through the green wood and come upon a clearing in the sunlight. In that clearing, the Green Knight and the Black Knight meet in battle, swords clanging as the two knights thrust and parry, the sound of steel ringing in the air. King Arthur, passive as in so much of the movie, stands back and is treated to a seriously conventional sword fight, enough to get his and our blood roiling and heroic juices flowing. He then invites the victor, the Black Knight, to join him as he gathers the best and the noblest of the land to sit with him at the Round Table. The Black Knight ignores his invitation, but will not allow Arthur and Patsy to pass over the bridge that the knight considers his territory.  A sword fight
ensues, and what a
sword fight it is! In a series of increasingly bloody acts, King Arthur
hacks
off limb after limb of his opponent, pushing so far beyond the
conventional
sword fight that he more than satisfies any zeal he or we might have
for the
glory of hand-to-hand combat. As he takes first one arm, then the
other, then
one leg, then the other, Arthur expects the Black Knight to yield to
him in the
accepted chivalric manner. But despite extravagant amounts of blood
spurting
from the places where his limbs had been, the Black Knight refuses to
admit
that Arthur has even wounded him seriously. Eventually he is no more
than a
talking torso, and King Arthur abandons his attempts to get the knight
to play by
the rules: “All right. We’ll
call it
a draw.”
“Oh, I see, running away, eh? You yellow bastard. Come back here and take what’s coming to you. I’ll bite your legs off.” Burn her! Burn her! A classic bit of scapegoating takes place when King Arthur collaborates with Sir Bedevere to identify a witch brought for burning by a mob. Interestingly enough, Sir Bedevere, who might well have positioned himself as Arthur’s rival as did the Black Knight, becomes the first noble to take Arthur up on his invitation to the Round Table. In some way, the coming together of these two knights to identify and hand over a witch to a bloodthirsty mob gives Arthur his first victory in establishing an ordered society of noble knights. Rene Girard has theorized that behind every myth lies an act of violence perpetrated once in real life and imitated afterwards in ritual re-enactments. Most often this act is the sacrifice of an innocent, brought about when rivals – whose rivalries touch off a time of chaos and social instability - unite together in agreement against an innocent victim who is now unanimously singled out, wrongly, to be the cause of the instability. When a mob unites to kill a singled-out victim, or scapegoat, they experience a catharsis of violent contagion which itself is responsible for dissolving the tension and re-establishing the social order. In order to use this mechanism to resolve future instabilities, they create myths and re-enact stories and rituals that conceal the innocence of the victim and place both the burden and the credit for re-establishing stability on the innocent they have killed. The perpetrators of the violence think themselves eminently reasonable and justified, as we can see by the slow stages of Sir Bedevere’s acquiescence in the murder of the witch. In order to feel no remorse at killing the victim, remorse that would dilute or even prevent the cathartic and restorative effect of the sacrifice, a mob must turn the victim into something that is not recognizably like them and hence not deserving of pity. The victim’s innocence must be concealed under the appearance of the Monstrous Other, the representative of evil who will bring about ruin if not destroyed.  Sir
Bedevere at first adopts a
critical stance towards the crowd’s evidence that the woman they have
brought
forth for burning is a witch. He even gives ear to the victim as she
defends
herself against the charge of witchcraft: “How do you know she
is a witch?”
“She looks like one.” “Yeah, a witch, burn her, burn her!” “I’m not a witch. I’m not.” “But you are dressed as one.” “They dressed me like this. And this isn’t my nose, it’s a false one.” “Well?” [Sir Bedevere to the mob.] “Well, we did do the nose. And the hat. The nose and the hat, yeah, but she is a witch. Burn her, burn her!” “Did you dress her up like that?” “No.” “No.” “No… well, yes. Yes, a bit…” Bedevere continues to question the mob, trying to elicit a reason that will justify his acquiescence in killing the victim. The peasants try one by one to answer his questions, but nothing suffices. Sir Bedevere cannot commit himself to joining them in unanimously condemning the alleged witch until King Arthur steps in to imitate his mode of scientific reasoning. The two men agree upon a method of comparing the woman’s weight to the weight of a duck (don’t ask), to determine if she is a witch. King Arthur, who is positioned to be both model and rival for Sir Bedevere by virtue of his nobility and knighthood, is the necessary catalyst for the mob and its director (Bedevere) to ignore the signs of innocence and label the victim “a lady fit for burning,” i.e. a witch. Face the Peril This is a necessarily brief introduction to the mythic elements in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I leave it as an exercise to the reader and viewer to discover where else the Monty Pythons have taken a bit of Arthurian lore and subjected it to their own inimitable brand of buffoonery. The astute viewer will find such quintessential mythic episodes as The Foul Creature Who Guards the Cave; The Knight Who Takes Refuge with Virgins; The Hero and the Divine Summons; The Rescue from Forced Marriage; Enduring the Taunts of the Foe; and the Crossing of the Bridge of Death. These episodes are funny, but the humor should not lessen our appreciation of the moments of breathtaking beauty found in the film. Sir Galahad’s encounter with the virgins of Castle Anthrax is visually appealing -- the castle interiors draped in silks and illuminated with soft candlelight, the young women dressed in flowing white robes. A scene precedes Sir Lancelot’s savage invasion of Herbert’s wedding as lovely as any filmed representation of medieval merriment: maidens dance, cooks prepare lavish dishes, even the guards have garlands in their hair. Another classic scene is the massing of Arthur’s army for the final battle. Although it makes very little sense in terms of numbers of troops relative to what has gone before, the actual sound and sight of the hundreds of troops massing at the top of the hill is as well done as any in Braveheart.  Finally, after they
have
successfully crossed the Bridge of Death, King Arthur and Sir Bedevere
board an
elegant, mournful vessel that sails them gracefully to the land of
their
desire, where they will find at last the object they seek, the Holy
Grail. This
image is the most haunting in the film, and recalls the sailing off to
Avalon
of Arthur’s funeral ship in traditional Arthurian lore. The fact that
upon
arrival at the other side, Arthur finds himself come full circle, on
the
outside looking in, powerless to enter the castle where the French
guards call
his mother a hamster and his father a reeker of elderberries does not
negate
the visual of the sailing ship. It just
affirms that, yes, go ahead: with Monty Python and the Holy Grail you
can have your cake and eat it, too. Essay © Rae D'Orazio Stabosz. In her twenty-fifth year at the University of Delaware, Rae D'Orazio Stabosz is Associate Director of the Foreign Language Media Center and President of Catholic Scholars. She is also a writer, film buff, poet and mother of nine. Ms. Stabosz has a particular interest in understanding violence in culture and promoting civilized public discourse. |
