The Most Holy Grail! Part Two - Act 1?

"...And you often get people who just bandy the word 'ant' around like it meant something." - Michael Palin as Soldier.

Here we are again, examining Monty Python material for clues to the creative life underneath the jokes we all know so well. With such a pedantic preoccupation, ("pre" because no one's paying me to do this,) it seems appropriate to start with a quote from the pedantic Soldier. It seemed appropriate-er to start with a line that was never in the movie, cut from the script before the film was shot. You'd have to be seriously pedantic to quote a line that nobody knows, yet is still attributable to the movie. You, too, can read lines that were never in the movie, by purchasing for your own amusement, Monty Python and The Holy Grail (Book). And, if you haven't done yourself (or the creators) the favor of purchasing the movie, DO IT HERE! 

We all know the movie. But did you know that the movie has its roots firmly entrenched in the TV show "Monty Python's Flying Circus"? That, and a sincere appreciation for the film, will be the focus of the next few blogs. Take a walk with me down one of the brightest spots on our zeitgeist's Memory Lane, and watch along if you want.

Although the lads took great pains to create a movie, a full length feature, as opposed to a series of sketches like they did for the TV show, we have to start with the admission that for the first twenty minutes or so, they failed utterly. The first few scenes are essentially stand-alone sketches, with little consequence or story momentum. That said, they're hilarious, and get the movie off to a roaring start. Much of the quotability of the movie comes from this section, as well as a few classic bits that rank right up there with the best work Monty Python has ever done. Let's take it bit by bit.

The Credits

It's a medium oddity (as in the medium of cinema) that one of the first things we see in a movie, the opening credits, are often one of the last things created. So, too, with the Holy Grail. Working with Jones in post production, Michael Palin considered the fact that he hated opening credits. Just a bunch of boring stuff to get through before the real fun begins. He came up with the idea of funny subtitles. The dramatic music, the white letter on black screens, and then, snuck in at the bottom, some silliness. This is nothing new-- Python had tons of fun with titles, if not subtitles, on their TV show. But even with something as seemingly straight forward as this, look at the variations on the theme they give us.

First, the subtitles are silly, but functional. The title of the movie comes up, and the subtitle shows us the same title, only with minor alterations and slashes through the "o"s. We quickly identify this as pigeon Swedish, and recall that Palin has a fondness for the Scandinavian countries; "Finland, Finland, Finland!" But, for all of this, the title and subtitle are so similar as to make the subtitle pointless. This is a riff on the pedantry of subtitles. Even if film isn't as universal as it could be, what with all that dialogue, it can certainly be said that credits are universally understood, or ignored. 

A few titles later, the point is hammered home, as Connie Booth and (sigh) Carol Cleveland get their credit, with a "with". The subtitle translates; "Wik". Then comes "Also wik". When the "regular" credits get a little silly, with an "Also also appearing", the subtitles keep pace with "Also also wik". We all get the idea. It's medium funny (as in it's a joke about the medium, but it's also just medium funny.)

But then, just as we're anticipating the joke, things get silly. The next subtitle makes no effort to translate the titles, but instead, pitches them on a Swedish holiday. It turns out that the subtitle has an agenda! This is the first variation on the dumb subtitle theme, and it's brilliant!

But in true Palin-esque fashion, no sooner does he land on a joke than he starts to wander away from it. After a few pitches on the glory of a Swedish holiday, the subtitle gets sidetracked by the "majestic moose", and an anecdote about a moose biting the subtitle's sister (presumably subtitling the chick flick in the cinema next door.) All during Hazel Pethig's credit.

It starts out funny, but then the anecdote gets a bit... epic. It's funnier in concept than in fact, and audiences often laugh at the sight of the big paragraph, but they don't  machete their way through it. (Not often, anyway. True fans will pause the movie, just to read the whole thing, or they'll speed read out loud in a generally annoying way.) The subtitle is like that guy at a party you can't wait to get away from. All of this moose talk is probably building up to a sales pitch for life insurance. 

Anyway, that's variation #3. At this point, ostensibly, the theater stops the film. The screen goes black, the music groooooans to a stop, and an apology title comes up. Conceptually, again, this is funny-- the idea that the credits (and subtitles) are being typed up in real time up there in the projection booth. But the oh-so-British apology is comedically tepid, and the music slowing down to a stop, like a broken siren, is more unsettling than funny. Right off the bat, the lads seem disinterested in whether we laugh or not. Breaking the norm is more important than cracking a smile. Anyway, don't believe the apology for a second. The next credit card comes up, the music restored... and the subtitle reappears, picking up the story where he left off. "Mynd you, moose bites Kan be pretti nasti..." The music grinds down again, and another apology. 

New music, more lush and romantic, less cacophonous, as the credits reboot and continue. But the observant can spot variation #4. Having introduced mooses as a theme, they now get their own credit at the bottom of the "real" more sedate credits. "Special Moose Effects"... "Miss Taylor's Moose by..." "Mooses' noses wiped by..." The Moose titles take on a spectacular Chaplinesque resilience; no matter how many times you kick these subtitles out, they find their way back in. You have to be sharp to spot it, but the previous iterations of this pun have sharpened us. We're ready for the movie now. Just in time for it to stop a third time. A final apology, and a complaint about money, and a complete jettisoning of the "real" mood of the movie. 

Here, (final variation, I promise,) they give us a Flying Circus reference. Cuidado! Llamas! In bright clashing primary colors, the final credits flicker up on the screen, guaranteed to cause a seizure in the more sensitive lobes. Mexican mariachi music plays, with whoops and "Rrrrrreeeeeeeeeeee"s. You wanted to get rid of the mooses, did you? Well, the llamas are far more aggressive and in your face. They lunge right into the prime credits, instead of waiting politely at the end. "Executive Producer- John Goldstone and 'Ralph' The Wonder Llama." This takes us right to the directors' credit, and with a spirited "Ole!", the credits end. 

Can you imagine a current filmmaker completely shredding the mood of their movie, for a joke? Judd Apatow has never done it. I can't think of another example. Generally, you use the credits to establish your mood, and it's deemed unhelpful to work against said mood. But that's what Jones and Palin did here. Having established the heavy white on black credits and the overly portentous music, which would have set up their movie beautifully, they toss it all out, for a joke-- not a particularly good one, either. While I loves me a good reference, llamas were just a minor shift away from the moose theme already established. Was it worth it? Probably not. But you have to admire the creative courage and confidence. These guys were so sure of themselves, so certain in what they could get away with. Even when they didn't get away with it, you still have to applaud the audacity.

Meanwhile, just to recap, that's five, count 'em, five variations on a relatively simple theme, the absurdity of credit subtitles. This is the unique ability of Monty Python-- to riff on comic themes, coming up with surprising and exhilarating new takes. They did it in the first episode, with Famous Deaths and Picasso on a Bike. They're like jazz musicians, only intentionally funny.

And (whew!) that's just the credits.

The Coconuts

The film starts properly, or as properly as is possible. The first image is not funny. A ridge, fog and smoke, a body on a Catherine Wheel a la Brueghel. Cold winds whip past, moving the smoke, but failing to disperse it. Then, the sound of a horse galloping, getting closer. A head crests the ridge, a noble head, King Arthur himself, riding the up/down motion of a horse-- but there's no horse. He's holding a hand out, as if he were holding the reins, but there's nothing there. He's skipping! Behind him, a footman, Patsy (Gilliam), loaded with packs, skips behind him, holding the famous "two empty halves of coconuts... banging them together."

We've spoken a lot already about the coconuts, and how its simple genius brought everyone into a single vision and world. But it's worth speaking the obvious just once-- the image is hysterical, made more so by the dreary cruelty of the landscape. It establishes, at the start of the movie and for all time, the unique silliness of this group. Those of us who love this movie have seen it numerous times, and I would bet that it gets a laugh from all of us, every time. 

Chapman, it must be said, delivers the moment with a perfect blend of pompous grace and oblivious straight-laced absurdity. Chapman, the hedonist of the group, contributed little to the writing. What he contributed was first rate, but he was too lazy or preoccupied to produce the volume of pages that Palin did. He was also an alcoholic, and unreliable as a performer. Giving him the role of King Arthur was the group's way of giving themselves the plum roles, and consigning him to the straight man role of King Arthur. But in so doing, they established Chapman as their leading man, and he rose to the occasion. His take on King Arthur, his earnest entitlement mixed with a Stan Laurel-esque acceptance of the craziness surrounding him, was pitch perfect and essential to the success of the movie. If the coconuts got everyone started, Chapman's King Arthur was the pulsing core of the movie, the gravitational pull that kept all the moving parts in the same orbit. 

Arthur approaches a castle battlement, calls up, and soon a Soldier (Palin) appears. The bit is simple-- The King wants to round up knights for his Round Table, but the overly pedantic soldier keeps sidetracking him. Getting sidetracked? This sounds like a job for Palin Man! Written by Jones and Palin, it's a bit we've seen often in the TV show. King Arthur finds himself reluctantly drawn into an argument about the coconuts. The argument devolves into birds, their wing spans and air speed velocities, and fed up, Arthur "gallops" away, leaving the Soldiers to their endlessly reductive discussion. In early drafts, the conversation turns to ants and termites, as the above quote suggests. Seriously, Palin can do this all day. 

It's a nice bit, that calls attention to the coconuts. But it's pretty run of the mill for the Palin/Jones duo, and is extraordinarily reminiscent of the TV show. It's shot very dramatically, with both Soldiers back lit and silhouetted, but it's a variation on the Gas Cooker sketch, as well the Poet Meter Reader. The coconut gag is exquisite, but if it was in service to this relatively quotidian fare, it would have been wasted.

Ah, but next we have--

Bring Out Your Dead!

Structurally, "Bring Out Your Dead" is a typical and classic Cleese/Chapman style sketch, very reminiscent of the undertakers. In fact, that scene plays out in a single take, without so much as a camera move, a slow pan, nothing. It could easily have taken place in, say, an office. It's clear from the first few bits that the lads are having trouble breaking out of their sketch TV background. The subject matter is a bit dark, but this is essentially a customer trying to use a service inappropriately. "I'd like a bit of pram, please." 

Look at that production value!

But the production value! Before the sketch starts, we are set up with an exquisitely rendered medieval village, filled with mud, mournful keening, and squalor of intense specificity. Our first shot is a closeup on a dead, pox-filled face, and then we pull back to take in the environment. The miserable condition of the village is ignored by Dead Carter Idle, as he trudges through the mess, banging his triangle and intoning his heartless pitch. Jones and Gilliam spend a lot of time on the set up, and to good effect. We still get some humor-- someone beating a cat like they would a rug, for instance, complete with a pained "ROWR!" with every beat-- but mostly, we're here to let the realism sink in. The sketch itself is as cruel as the situation, and the common cruelty may be what bridges the dissonance between the verisimilitude and the silliness. If the written content is stuck in TV sketch mode, the production design is pulling us out of our comfort zone. 

Of course, this sketch is almost completely unrelated to the prior bit, so the lads take a little time to connect the dots. Arthur prances through, followed by Patsy. Arthur's feminine skipping, against this background of wretchedness, is a great visual gag, and a great statement on the nature of royalty, prompting some Idle chatter, usually identifiable by its 60's cynicism. "Must be a king... he hasn't got shit all over him." (The first bit of profanity as well.)

Dennis

Now we follow Arthur as he rides through a bunch of serfs working the land. Again, scholarship and production value give this a little veneer. But this sketch, at the start anyway, is the exact same sketch as the coconuts scene! Arthur is trying to get some information, and the pedantic people he runs into take him off into conversations he has no interest in. However, clearly, Jones had a bit more influence in this particular scene, as the sketch illustrates the gap between royalty and the people of the Middle Ages. Arthur announces himself as "King of the Britons". "King of the who?" Jones' serf replies. Arthur is further disappointed to learn that no one lives in the castle he was approaching, like a castle-to-castle moat salesman. But all of that falls by the wayside as Dennis (Palin), the socialist, explains and agitates for communist revolution. 

But rather than follow in the same path as the coconut sketch, with Arthur trotting away in frustration, it takes a nice turn as Cleese/Chapman take it over. "How did you become King, then?" Jones' serf asks. With a burst of cinema magic, (lights and background angels singing,) Arthur nobly recounts the myth of the Lady in the Lake giving him Excalibur. Dennis, the communist, goes to town, puncturing the myth with reductionist fury. Using the commutative property, and an offscreen thesaurus, he shuffles the crucial properties of the legend. Let's break it down, 'cause it's a lot of fun.  

"The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your King."  This story boils down to three essential properties - 1.) Lady of the Lake, 2.) the sword, and 3.) King. 1+2=3. Dennis reconfigures the math and makes us doubt the outcome. 

"Listen, strange women lying in ponds (1) distributing swords (2) is no basis for a system of government." (3). 1+2 does not equal 3. 

"Supreme executive power (3) derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony." (1+2) Notice how "The Lady of the Lake" has become "strange women lying in ponds" and part of a "farcical aquatic ceremony."

"You can't expect to wield supreme executive power (3) just because some watery tart (1) through a sword (2) at you." They apparently had difficulty coming up with alternate terms for monarchy, so they went to supreme executive power twice. What else might they have tried? "You can't expect to possess the highest throne in the land..." "You don't get coronated..." "You don't get to be prime beneficiary of the entire feudal system..." "You can't wear the tiara..." 

"If I went around saying I was emperor (3) just because some moistened bint (1) lobbed a scimitar (2) at me, they'd put me away!"

Dennis is basically saying the same thing over and over, with slightly different phraseology. This is Cleese SMO-- parrot sketch, anyone? and it works beautifully here. Plus, Cleese/Chapman's anger comes into the picture, as Arthur tries to throttle Dennis. A child of the 60s, Dennis doesn't resist, but he turns it all into a media event. "Help, help, I'm being repressed!" he calls to the other serfs, and when Arthur calls him a peasant, it's like the "N" bomb just got dropped. "What a giveaway! Did you hear that? That's what I'm all about..." Dennis rabble rouses, using Arthur's snotty irritation to recruit new Commies. 

Another nice little sketch, and the production value is becoming more apparent, but still, we have three bits of cloth held together by the merest thread-- Arthur, passing through. Arthur seems out of touch, and we're almost sympathizing with him as he confronts some very small minds. But things are about to shift, violently. 

The Black Knight

In a sudden burst of cinematic ambition, we see King Arthur's feminine prancing intercut with an extraordinarily violent sword fight. Finally, with the music building, then cutting off, Arthur reaches the fight and observes from a distance. 

This is what Jones and Gilliam wanted. We've never seen a sword fight like this. The swords are huge, the armor and chain mail cumbersome, the moves awkward and ungainly. There are grunts of effort, shouts of rage and pain, and it all feels incredibly real. As if to underscore the impressive athleticism of this brawl, we cut to Arthur and Patsy reacting to the Black Knight's skills. The realism is bruised a bit at the final flourish, as the rival knight charges the Black Knight, who throws his sword, and manages to get it right through the rival's narrow visor. But the gushing blood herds us right past the impossibility of this feat, and yes, blood gushes out of the helmet, startlingly red blood. 

Arthur approaches in his effete prance to offer the Black Knight his congratulations, but it becomes clear that the Black Knight isn't interested in Arthur, giving him only inscrutable silence. But when Arthur tries to move on, the Black Knight says "None shall pass," and suddenly, the prancing Arthur is next on this Black Knight's "to die" list. 

The stage is set for one of the classic sequences in all of film. You would think, given the cinematic nature of this piece, that Jones or Gilliam conceived of it. But the cruelty and over the top bloodshed should tip you off. This is Cleese/Chapman, in all of their gruesome glory. Although they were famous in the TV show for creating many variations on "A guy walks into an office" sketches, they seem to be the first to grab the cinematic gauntlet and toss it back at the powers that be, creating a real filmic sequence that is also hysterically funny. I'll recount briefly...

Given the different physicalities of the two foes, we are not expecting Arthur to hold his own. But we'd be wrong. Arthur soon establishes his fighting superiority with a few dodges, a head blow, and finally, as the Black Knight charges him, a full arm-ectomy. But the Black Knight refuses to yield. So Arthur chops off the next arm. Then a leg. Then the other leg, leaving the relative stump of a man on the ground. Even then, as he rides off, the Black Knight chides him; "Running away, eh?"

Hey, while you're down there... 

Some classic lines stand out in this bit. When the armless Knight renews his attack, kicking at Arthur, Arthur mockingly whines "What are you gonna do? Bleed on me?" And the blood spurting from the various hacked off limbs is hilarious! But the structure and discipline of this bit are awe-inspiring. From the set up, prancing Arthur vs. murderous Knight, that gets twisted so effortlessly, to the logical progression, to the illogical but inescapable conclusion, the sketch lays out its ambition and then takes it farther than we could have imagined. The sketch even manages to become topical, as the Black Knight insists on continuing the fight, even with his limbs shorn off. Remember, this was written and shot in 1974, during the televised Vietnam War, and America was taking the same position as the Black Knight. "I'm invincible!" the Black Knight screams. "You're a loony," Arthur replies (another Python callback-- Eric the Halibut, anyone? Or Spot the Loony?). In its over-the-top gore, it's reminiscent of the "Salad Days" sketch, but it's even better. The first truly classic scene of what will become a truly classic movie.

A Witch!

Arthur prances on (I'm trying to come up with a different term for this-- skipping, lilting, hopping-- but prancing says it the best.) to a village in the midst of a demonstration. Again, Gilliam and Jones go all out, creating a very believable village, not quite as muddy and wretched as the last one, but still crowded and noisy. In a sketch that feels like it was written by Idle, with some chiming in from Jones, the villagers storm the town center, where Sir Bedevere (Jones), a knight, holds court.

The Villagers have Carol Cleveland tied up, in a witch hat and a tied on carrot for a nose. We've seen this sketch a lot from Idle in the Flying Circus days, but usually in a television context-- the Book at Bedtime, for instance, which turns out to be pornographic. It works perfectly well in this medieval set up as well. Idle and the Villagers are frantic with the belief that they have a witch, but it quickly becomes apparent that they are tipping the scales with the fake witch get up, and the wise Bedevere busts them. This is a quintessential British sketch. Idle's first line is "We've found a witch. May we burn her?" So polite! And when Bedevere asks them to prove their proposition, they are completely brought up short, and mortified. What follows from that point on is a patient schoolmaster sketch, walking the village through the process of proving witchhood. 

The humor of this bit is two-fold. One, the bloodlust of the masses getting punctured repeatedly by Bedevere's questions and the lame responses they earn, is where most of the laughs come from. When Bedevere asks how they know she is a witch, Cleese, in his Gumby-esque chest voice, replies "Well! She turned me into a newt!" Of course, he's not a newt, so he rationalizes "I got better." The other, less funny but more Python-esque font of humor, is the actual logical proof that leads us to Cleveland's witchhood. Witches float, ducks float, ergo... It's silly, but not hilarious. 

But, again, Arthur gets to do something. He's the one that calls out "A duck!" at the crucial moment, prompting gasps from the crowd. We're seeing the rehabilitation of Arthur, from a perpetually frustrated, blinkered monarch, to a smart action hero. Plus, this is the first "plot point" of the movie, wherein something happens that will impact on the rest of the movie-- Arthur snags Bedevere, his first knight for the Round Table. It took them a while, almost a full quarter of their movie, but they finally stumbled onto feature narrative structure.

Like it meant something...

Next Week; There's a PLOT, and it thickens!