I just watched Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. As with all of Monty Python's humour, it is a hilarious, if you are into that brand of comedy, and this film is particularly inspired. It is a bawdy, irreverent, occasionally chaotic (and occasionallypsychotic) series of sketches attempting to tease out the meaning of life, or the lack thereof.
The hilarious end of the movie highlights, I think, an important feature of the worldview of the non-Christian. I would like to reproduce for you a bit of the narrative along with my commentary.
I agree with Rand that any piece of writing betrays certain philosophies & assumptions (the "worldview," if you like) of the author, yet it is of course unfair to automatically interpret the contents of a comedy sketch as the authentic viewpoints of the writers/actors. Let my interpretation and comments apply, if not to the writer/actors of Monty Python, then, to the implict worldview of "the implied author."
The movie about life concludes, naturally enough, with a sketch about death. Death himself visits a group of English suburbanite yuppies at a dinner party with a knock on the door.
- GEOFFREY:
- Yes?
- [pause]
- Is it about the hedge?
- [pause]
- Look. I am awfully sorry, but--
- GRIM REAPER:
- I am the Grim Reaper.
- GEOFFREY:
- Who?
- GRIM REAPER:
- The Grim Reaper.
- GEOFFREY:
- Yes, I see.
- GRIM REAPER:
- I am death.
- GEOFFREY:
- Yes, well, the thing is, we've got some people from America for dinner tonight, and--
- ANGELA:
- Who is it, darling?
- GEOFFREY:
- It's a 'Mr. Death' or something. He's come about the reaping? I don't think we need any at the moment.
- ANGELA:
- Hello. Well, don't leave him hanging around outside, darling. Ask him in.
- GEOFFREY:
- Darling, I don't think it's quite the moment.
- ANGELA:
- Do come in. Come along in. Come and have a drink. Do. Come on.
After chatting for awhile with "Mr. Death", he interrupts them to announce his reason for visiting...
- GRIM REAPER:
- Silence! I have come for you.
- ANGELA:
- You mean... to--
Take you away. That is my purpose. I am death.
-
-
-
- GEOFFREY:
- Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?
- HOWARD:
- I don't see it that way, Geoff. [sniff] Let me tell you what I think we're dealing with here: a potentially positive learning experience to get an--
- GRIM REAPER:
- Shut up! Shut up, you American.
-
- You always talk, you Americans. You talk and you talk and say 'let me tell you something' and 'I just wanna say this'. Well, you're dead now, so shut up!"
After an equally scathing generalization leveled against the British, the narrative moves to the chapter called "The Afterlife." In this sequence, many of the prominent (and not so prominent) figures from earlier in the movie who have died tragic (or comedic) deaths, again appear in the celestial rows and rows of round tables at the Great Eternal Dinner Party in Heaven.
- GRIM REAPER:
- Behold... Paradise.
- [elevator music]
- MR. HENDY:
- I love it here, darling.
- MRS. HENDY:
- Me too, Marvin.
- RECEPTIONIST:
- Hello. Welcome to Heaven. Excuse me, could you just sign here, please, sir?
- JEREMY:
- Yes.
- RECEPTIONIST:
- Thank you! There's a table for you through there in the restaurant.
- JEREMY:
- Thank you.
- RECEPTIONIST:
- For the ladies,...
- FIONA:
- Mhm. 'After-life Mints'. [hiccup]
- DEBBIE:
- Thank you.
- RECEPTIONIST:
- Happy Christmas!
- DEBBIE:
- Oh, is it Christmas today?
- RECEPTIONIST:
- Of course, madam. It's Christmas every day in Heaven.
They then take their seats and begin enjoying pleasant conversation with their heavenly neighbors. However, hors'doeuvres, and light chatter are soon interrupted by the commencement of the main show.
A group of scantily-clad, Las Vegas-style peacock dancers arrive, wearing wings and red Christmas-y lingerie, singing and dancing in unison. They eventually lend the audience's attention to the main performer of the evening, an unnaturally tan-faced, unnaturally white-toothed Tony Bennet-style lounge singer...
- TONY BENNETT:
- Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It's truly a real honourable experience to be here this evening, a very wonderful and warm and emotional moment for all of us, and I'd like to sing a song for all... of you.
- [applause]
- [singing]
- It's Christmas in Heaven.
- All the children sing.
- It's Christmas in Heaven.
- Hark. Hark. Those church bells ring.
- It's Christmas in Heaven.
- The snow falls from the sky,
- But it's nice and warm, and everyone
- Looks smart and wears a tie.
- It's Christmas in Heaven.
- There's great films on TV:
- 'The Sound of Music' twice an hour
- And 'Jaws' One, Two, and Three.
- JOSEPH AND MARY: [singing]
- There's gifts for all the family.
- There's toiletries and trains.
- THREE WISE MEN: [singing]
- There's Sony Walkman Headphone sets
- And the latest video games.
-
- EVERYONE: [singing]
- It's Christmas! It's Christmas in Heaven!
- Hip hip hip hip hip hooray!
- Every single day
- Is Christmas day!
- It's Christmas! It's Christmas in Heaven!
- Hip hip hip hip hip hooray!
- Every single day
- Is Chri--"
My only comment is to point out that heaven, here, is pictured as an everlasting Christmas. I can just imagine the writing meeting: OK guys, we need to picture heaven. How shall we approach this? "Well, heaven has to be happy. It has to be uber-happy!" What is the happiest day of the year for all the little British boys and girls? "Why, Christmas of course!" So what is eternal bliss? "Christmas day, every day! Oo, and there are topless women, and a lovely dinner show for everyone."
-
Now, this vision of heaven is simulteneously hilarious and tragic. It's funny because, in one way it rings true... If every day were Christmas, O what childlike delight! what rapture! Yet notice the mythmakers make the end of the movie move swiftly, with good reason: If we, as viewers, had enough time to become bored with the joke, become Tony Bennet, with the angelic dancers, with the dinner party, and to become filled with a longing to leave this ampitheater and return home, then we would remember that there is no home to return to... for the characters in the movie, this is our new home... We would realize that this vision of heaven is very much more like a vision of hell. If bliss, upon reflection, becomes intolerable simplicity, then it is no bliss at all.
For the non-Christian, heaven is something worth thinking about, worth making a few jokes about, worth making images of... but it is ultimately just another monolithic reminder of the mysterious country, from which no traveller has returned, and the creeping fear of what might be when we get there.
-
Is it fire and brimstone, and the gnashing of teeth? Is it darkness, nothingness, and a puff of existential smoke? Or, (do we dare to ask ourselves): Might it be a happy place, every day a Christmas day, an abundance of food and sex and music for all? And, (if we do dare,) do we dare go further and ask ourselves: Would this be enough?
For Monty Python, the Christmas song is interrupted, and the movie closes with the following monologue:
- "Well, that's the end of the film. Now, here's the meaning of life. Thank you, Brigitte. M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special.
-
-
Uh, 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, and, finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of [male genitalia] 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... arses and back in the sodding cinema. Family entertainment bollocks. What they want is filth: people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tupperware parties, babysitters being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates, vigilante groups strangling chickens, armed bands of theatre critics exterminating mutant goats-- Where's the fun in pictures? Oh, well, there we are. Here's the theme music. Goodnight."
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