Background

Python's final film returned to something closer to the style of Flying Circus. A series of sketches loosely followed the ages of man from conception to death. Directed again by Jones, The Meaning of Life is embellished with some of Python's most bizarre and disturbing moments, as well as various elaborate musical numbers. The film is by far their darkest work, containing a great deal of spectacular violence and black humour: at the time of its release, the Pythons confessed their aim was to offend "absolutely everyone". A short film by Gilliam - The Crimson Permanent Assurance - originally planned as a sketch within the film, eventually grew so ambitious that it was cut from the movie and used as a supporting feature in its own right (on video and DVD, and also in television screenings, this section is tagged onto the start of the film as a prologue). Though a commercial and critical success, The Meaning of Life is generally not regarded as being of the same quality as its predecessors. Many feel that it lacks the structure of Holy Grail and Life of Brian.[citation needed] Idle claims it was just "one re-write away from being perfect". The Pythons had originally wanted to do one final re-write introducing one lead character (along the lines of Arthur or Brian) who could be followed through the ages of man. However, Cleese refused as he had grown tired of the already protracted writing process for the film.[citation needed] Crucially, this was the last project that all six Pythons would collaborate on, except for the 1989 compilation Parrot Sketch Not Included where we see the Python cast sitting in a closet for 4 seconds - which would also be the last time Chapman was filmed on screen with the rest of the Pythons.

Plot

The film is divided into chapters, though the chapters themselves often contain several more-or-less unconnected sketches.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance, a lengthy introductory film directed by Terry Gilliam. In a satire on globalization, elderly office clerks rebel against their cold, efficient corporate masters at 'The Permanent Assurance Company', 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. Originally conceived by Gilliam as a 6-minute animated sequence in the middle of the film (at the end of Part V), it was 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. The film proper opens with the six Pythons playing fish in a tank, who engage in a brief philosophical conversation. The opening credits then roll, with Eric Idle singing the song "The Meaning of Life" over animation by Gilliam. "Part I: The Miracle Of Birth", involves a woman in labour who is ignored by doctors (Cleese and Chapman), nurses, and eventually the hospital's administrator (Palin) as they drag in more and more elaborate equipment, including 'the machine that goes PING!'. "The Miracle Of Birth - Part II: The Third World" is set in Yorkshire. It depicts a Roman Catholic family (Palin and Jones), who, because their religion forbids birth control, can no longer afford to feed their 63 children, whom they are forced to sell for medical experiments. The skit culminates in the musical number "Every Sperm is Sacred". This satire on the Catholic Church's attitudes toward contraception and masturbation is followed by one on Protestants: Chapman plays the Protestant husband next door who lectures his wife on the their church's tolerance toward birth control that enables them to have intercourse for fun, although his frustrated wife (Idle) points out that they never do. "Part II: Growth And Learning" features a group of religious schoolboys attending a mass (conducted by Palin) entitled "Oh Lord, Please Don't Burn Us". In a subsequent class, they watch in boredom as their teacher (Cleese) demonstrates sexual techniques with his wife (played by Patricia Quinn). Later, we see a rugby match of students vs. teachers, the ending of which overtly compares sports to war. In "Part III: Fighting Each Other", a First World War officer (Jones) attempting to rally his men to find cover during an attack is hindered by their insistence on celebrating his birthday, complete with presents and cake. This leads into a lecture on the positive qualities of the military, and a drill sergeant (Palin) trying to lead his men marching up and down the square. There follows a long sketch set during the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War in Natal, in which a decimating attack by Zulus is dismissed in lieu of a far more pressing matter: one of the officers (Idle) has had his leg stolen during the night. The military doctor (Chapman) hypothesizes that a tiger might be the perpetrator (despite the African setting). To recover the leg, a hunting party is formed, which later encounters two suspicious men dressed as two halves of a tiger suit, 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 a tiger. "The Middle Of The Film" is introduced by Gilliam dressed as a black man, and the viewer is invited to play (by Palin, in drag) "Find The Fish", in which a drag queen (Chapman), a gangly playboy (Jones), and an elephant-headed butler challenge the audience to 'find the fish' in a surreal scene shot in the operations floor at the former Battersea Power Station, Wandsworth, with a slight attempt at making it resemble a living room. Gilliam has said this sketch was intended to represent the strange dreams that one has.[citation needed] The elephant-headed butler is a creature from Gilliam's earlier film Time Bandits. The fish in the tank return briefly, praising the previous scene and commenting on the film so far. "Part IV: Middle Age" features a middle-aged couple taking a vacation to a bizarre resort (including Gilliam dressed in bizarre drag, and an authentic medieval dungeon with tropical music suggesting Hawaii). Having nothing to talk about, they order a conversation about the "meaning of life". Being apparently quite intellectually uncurious, they send it back, complaining "this conversation isn't very good." In "Part V: Live Organ Transplants", two paramedics arrive at the doorstep of a card-carrying organ donor (Gilliam) to claim his liver, brutally disemboweling and killing him in the process. Later, a man in a pink suit (Idle) emerges from the refrigerator belonging to the 'donor's' wife (Jones) to sing her a song about the wonders of the universe, resulting in her realizing the futility of her existence and agreeing to one of the paramedics' request for her own liver. This is followed by an attempt by the "Crimson Permanent Assurance" to take over the film proper, which is dealt with by dropping a large skyscraper on the Assurance building. "Part VI: The Autumn Years", is introduced with a Noel Cowardesque fop (Idle) performing the song "Isn't It Awfully Nice to Have a Penis?". Following this, Mr. Creosote, an impossibly fat man (Jones), waddles into a decorous restaurant, swears at the host (Cleese), and vomits copiously, into buckets if available. He eats an enormous meal, and finally, after delivering the immortal line "Fuck off, I'm full!", is persuaded to eat one last wafer-thin mint, whereupon he explodes, showering the restaurant with offal. "Part VIB: The Meaning of Life", contains two philosophical monologues. The first is delivered by a cleaning lady (played by Jones), entirely in rhyme, culminating with "I feel that life's a game, you sometimes win or lose / And though I may be down right now, at least I don't work for Jews". Her reward for this offensive comment is to have a bucket of vomit immediately dumped on her head by the nearby French waiter (Cleese), who then offers a profuse apology for her racism. The second is delivered by another French waiter (Idle), who leads the camera on a long walk through the streets to the house where he grew up, and delivers his personal philosophy: "The world is a beautiful place. You must try and make everyone happy, and bring peace and content with you everywhere you go. And so I became a waiter... well, it's not much of a philosophy I know, but well... fuck you, I can live my own life in my own way if I want to – fuck off." "Part VII: Death" opens with a funeral setup. After this, we see Arthur Charles Herbert Runcie MacAdam Jarrett (Chapman), a criminal convicted of making gratuitous sexist references in a film, killed in a manner of his choosing: he is chased off a cliff by topless women in brightly-colored crash helmets (the fact that Chapman was openly gay adds irony to this). A brief animation of suicidal leaves falling off a tree leads into "Social Death", in which a group of people 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 an 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 shuffle off their mortal coils. 'Heaven' turns out to be quite similar to the resort from Part IV. When they enter, the rest of the characters from the film (the Roman-Catholic Children, the topless women, Mr. Creosote, etc.) are already seated, and all are then serenaded by a Tony Bennett-like lounge singer (Chapman) with the monumentally cheesy song "Christmas In Heaven", a parody of Las Vegas-style shows, complete with women wearing plastic breasts in Santa Claus outfits and a gleaming-toothed lounge singer telling all those present that in Heaven, it's Christmas every day, forever. (According to the DVD commentary, the women were supposed to be topless but one of them refused on the grounds that she thought her breasts were too small.) The End Of The Film", in which Palin in drag (apparently the same character who hosted "The Middle of the Film") concludes the film by reading out 'the meaning of life' (introducing it by saying "It's nothing very special really"): 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." Finally, the film ends with part of the theme music and title sequence from Monty Python's Flying Circus on a TV set drifting off into space, before the "Galaxy Song" begins again, and plays over the end credits.