The Meaning of Life

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This page is about the Monty Python film; for the philosophical concept, see the Meaning of life.

Template:Infobox Film The Meaning of Life is a Monty Python comedy film made in 1983. This film was essentially a series of comedy skits and about the various stages of life - in some ways a return to the sketch comedy format of the original television series.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The resulting film is regarded as a little uneven, though which particular scenes are thought funny varies from person to person. Many scenes contain deep philosophical themes disguised as grotesque or infantile humor. Some more generally praised scenes include:

The Crimson Permanent Assurance, originally conceived by Terry Gilliam as a 6-minute animated sequence, later expanded to a 16-minute live-action piece, to the point where it no longer fit into the framework of the film and became a pre-movie short film in its own right. In an early satire of globalization -- and the Americanisation of the City of London in particular -- elderly traditional office clerks rebel against their cold, efficient corporate masters at The Very Big Corporation of America, commandeer their building and turn it into a pirate ship, raiding financial districts in numerous big cities before falling off the edge of the world. The sequence particularly echoes Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981) and the 1950's Hollywood movie The Crimson Pirate.
The Miracle of Birth, Part I, is the opening scene of the film proper, where a woman in labour is ignored by doctors, nurses, Japanese tourists, and eventually the hospital's administrator (Michael Palin) as they drag in more and more elaborate equipment, including "the machine that goes 'PING!'". This scene is based on the argument about the masculinisation/technologicalisation of the birth process.
The Miracle of Birth part II, which shows a Catholic family living in "the Third World" (Yorkshire), who sell their 63 children for medical experiments, because they do not believe in birth control. The skit culminates in the musical number "Every Sperm is Sacred" [1], a parody combining "Consider Yourself" from the musical Oliver! with the ragamuffin dancing orphans of Annie, released the previous year. The segment satirises the Catholic Church's attitudes to contraception and masturbation and follows with a burlesque of Protestant tolerance, always available but somehow never used.
Growth and Learning, in which a group of schoolboys watch in boredom as their teacher (John Cleese) demonstrates sexual techniques with his wife.
War Part One, in which a First World War officer attempting to rally his men to find cover during an attack is hindered by their insistence on celebrating his birthday, complete with presents, gift vouchers and a cake.
War Part Two, set during a colonial conflict in Africa, in which a decimating attack by Zulus is dismissed in lieu of a far more pressing matter; one of the officers having had a leg stolen during the night. Suspicious that a tiger might be the perpetrator, despite being in Africa ("Well, it's probably escaped from the zoo." "Doesn't seem very likely..."), a hunting party is formed, which later encounters two suspicious men in tiger suits who attempt (rather pathetically) to assert their innocence in the matter through a succession of increasingly feeble excuses as to why they are dressed as tigers.
Find The Fish, in which a drag queen (Graham Chapman), a gangly playboy (Terry Jones), and an elephant-headed butler (in fact dressed in the costume of a troll from Time Bandits) challenge the audience to 'find the fish' in the following abstract scene in a living room set, actually part of the operations floor at the former Battersea Power Station, Wandsworth. This is perhaps the strangest thing Python has done, giving literally no explanation to what it is. Later, Terry Gilliam confessed it was supposed to be parodying strange dreams that we sometimes get, and wished that they could have examined it more fully in the movie. The prevailing solution is that "the fish" is in fact the viewer, as the scene is shot with a fish-eye lens, another whimsy on the philosophical subject of the film. A goldfish (or perhaps something that resembles a goldfish) can be seen in the elephant's plate. This segment was referenced in the Family Guy Episode, A Fish Out of Water.
The Galaxy Song, in which a couple of paramedics doorstep a card-carrying organ donor to claim his liver immediately. Later, a man in a pink suit (Idle) emerges from Mrs. Brown's, the 'donor's' wife (Terry Jones), refrigerator to sing her a song about the wonders of the universe, resulting in her realising the futility of her existence and agreeing to one of the paramedics' request for her own liver.
A Noel Cowardesque fop (Idle) performs a song about the penis.
Mr. Creosote, in which the eponymous gourmand, an impossibly fat man (Jones), waddles into a decorous restaurant, swears at the host (Cleese), vomits copiously, eats an enormous meal while vomiting into buckets, and finally -- after being persuaded to eat one last "wafer-thin mint" by the impeccable 'French' host -- explodes, showering the restaurant with offal. This scene is possibly based on Jean Paul Sartre's existentialist book Nausea -- in which the customer feels constantly sick with existence, though never actually vomits as graphically as Mr. Creosote.
The Man Who Chose His Own Death, in which a condemned criminal, given the choice of his manner of execution, is chased off a cliff and to his death by a horde of topless women. It is revealed that he was being executed for "making gratuitous sexist jokes in a motion picture" (the underlying gag being that in being given the freedom to choose the manner of his death, he chose to have his execution be a gratuitous sexist joke).
Social Death, in which a group of snobs at an isolated country house are visited by the Grim Reaper (Cleese), who knocks on the door. When the host answers and sees the Reaper with any enormous scythe, he says, "Is it about the hedge?" The dinner guests then spend a lot of time arguing with him before finally being persuaded to leave the mortal coil. When asked how they all died at the same time, the Grim Reaper replies, "The salmon mousse." In a rare Python ad-lib, Michael Palin says wonderingly as they are leaving to attend Heaven, "I didn't even eat the mousse.". "Heaven" turns out to be the restaurant from an earlier sketch. When they enter, the rest of the characters from the film (the Roman-Catholic Children, the topless women, etc.) are already seated, and all are then serenaded by the monumentally cheesy and actually quite sinister song "It's Christmas in Heaven" a parody of Las Vegas-style shows, complete with women wearing plastic breasts (the women were supposed to be topless but, according to the DVD comments, one of them refused on the grounds that she thought her breasts were too small) in Santa Claus outfits and Chapman as the gleaming-toothed lounge singer telling all present that it's Christmas in Heaven every day, forever. With this message –- that this Heaven they've all ended up in consists of an Americanised, consumerist Christmas, utterly lacking any religious/spiritual angle, for all eternity - the reality of the situation becomes clear: in fact everyone has gone to Hell. It can be argued that there is more Sartre influence here –- his No Exit –- and certainly the idea of endless repeating punishment is a staple of Greek Mythology –- i.e. Hades.
The End of the Film in which the presenter from The Middle of the Film (Palin in drag again) concludes the film by reading out "the meaning of life",

::"Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations",

then announces "and, finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of penises to annoy the censors and to hopefully spark some sort of controversy, which, it seems, is the only way, these days, to get the jaded, video-sated public off their fucking arses and back in the sodding cinema..." (The pictures of penises do not actually appear.) Finally, the film ends with part of the theme music and title sequence from Monty Python's Flying Circus on a TV drifting off into space, before the Galaxy Song begins again.

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Trivia

Because the film was not intended for television, some scenes show much more black humour than the Monty Python TV series (for example Mr Creosote or Human Organ Transplantation sketch).

In 2004 a "special edition" DVD was released with director's commentary, deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes documentaries, both real and spoof.

During the title sequence, the title of the movie is first written on a stone tablet as "The Meaning of Liff", and is corrected in a second by a lightning strike. This appears to allude to the humorous dictionary The Meaning of Liff (by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd), released in the same year as the movie. The Pythons say they didn't know a book existed bearing that name, though they knew Adams from his aid in writing an episode of Flying Circus.

The Republic of Ireland banned the film on original release, like it did The Life of Brian, but later rated it 15 when it was released on video.

In the United Kingdom it was rated 18 when released in the cinema and on its first release on video, but was re-rated 15 in 2000.

In order to persuade Universal Studios to make the film, the Pythons wrote a poem about the script, budget and content of the film. The poem being recited by Eric Idle was featured as the introduction to the film on the special edition DVD.

The "Man Who Chose His Own Death" sketch is scored to music from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

One of the plastic-breasts dancers during the "Christmas in Heaven" scene is Jane Leeves, in her first screen appearance, who would go on to play Daphne Moon in the American sitcom Frasier.

This is the last film featuring all the Pythons together as a group.

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External links

Template:Wikiquote

Monty Python		Image:MontyPythonFootLeftSmall.jpg
Members	Graham Chapman • John Cleese • Terry Gilliam • Eric Idle • Terry Jones • Michael Palin
Other Contributors	Douglas Adams • Connie Booth • Carol Cleveland • Neil Innes
Films & TV Series	Monty Python's Flying Circus • Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus • And Now For Something Completely Different • Monty Python and the Holy Grail • Monty Python's Life of Brian • Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl • Monty Python's The Meaning of Life • Monty Python's Personal Best