With two solo features under his belt, Terry Gilliam didn\u2019t wish to be limited to animation and lobbied for his own live-action unit. The result was The Crimson Permanent Assurance<\/em>, an exuberant fantasy about a long-established British firm shaking off the shackles of its American oppressors and embracing a life of corporate piracy. An amusing enough conceit, but at 16 minutes it broke up the flow at a critical point where the film was supposed to be moving into the home stretch, so it was surgically removed and placed at the front as a \u201cShort Feature Presentation,\u201d complete with its own credits. Subsequently, Cleese and Chapman\u2019s \u201cThe Miracle of Birth\u201d didn\u2019t hit quite the same, but it still served as a good bookend with the closing section on \u201cDeath,\u201d which climaxes with a Vegas-style floor show in the afterlife where guests are serenaded with the upbeat \u201cChristmas in Heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In between, The Meaning of Life<\/em> runs the gamut from ditties about the sanctity of spermatozoa, the enormity of the galaxy, and the pleasures of possessing a penis to gross-out gags depicting the removal of a liver from a live donor and a fancy restaurant invaded by an obese gourmand who vomits constantly. It also keeps up the proud Python tradition<\/a> of thumbing their noses at organized religion, taking jabs at Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and the Church of England in swift succession. The latter comes up during the part about \u201cGrowth and Learning,\u201d which also includes the spectacle of a schoolmaster teaching a sex education class to a group of terminally disinterested boys who don\u2019t even perk up when he disrobes to demonstrate intercourse with his wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From there, it\u2019s a steady march through \u201cMiddle Age,\u201d \u201cLive Organ Transplants,\u201d and \u201cThe Autumn Years,\u201d with an addendum specifically concerning \u201cThe Meaning of Life\u201d during which director Terry Jones pulls off an impressive three-and-a-half minute take that starts inside the restaurant where the odious Mr. Creosote has met an explosive end courtesy of a wafer-thin mint and follows Eric Idle\u2019s waiter out to the street as he leads the camera crew to his birthplace. And the whole thing wraps up with a dinner party attended by all of the Pythons save for Cleese, since he\u2019s the Grim Reaper who has come to take them away. If this was a tacit acknowledgement that the troupe had run its course, they at least went out on a film that pulled no punches and was just as cutting and inspired as their best material always was. Twelve years after making their big-screen bow with a compilation of rehashed television material<\/a>, Monty Python definitively proved they could deliver a sketch film that was inherently cinematic and presented a clear vision of how six opinionated comedians saw the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After The Meaning of Life<\/em> collected a Special Jury Prize at Cannes, the Pythons mostly went their separate ways, periodically popping up in each other\u2019s projects. Cleese and Idle joined the overqualified cast of Chapman\u2019s Yellowbeard<\/em>. Gilliam cast Palin against type in Brazil<\/em> and brought Idle along for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen<\/em>. Cleese recruited Palin to stutter his way through A Fish Called Wanda<\/em>. Palin asked Gilliam to help send him Around the World in 80 Days<\/em>. Jones got Cleese to play the villain in Erik the Viking<\/em>. The one time they all appeared together was for a 1989 television special to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Monty Python\u2019s Flying Circus<\/em>, which Chapman didn\u2019t live to see since he died before it was broadcast. He then would be the first to confirm if it truly was Christmas every day in heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Meaning of Life\u201d is streaming (in standard definition \u2013 gross) on Britbox and available to rent or purchase in HD and 4K from <\/em>the usual places<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/meaning-of-life-2-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
After the church, the institution that comes in for the most drubbing in The Meaning of Life<\/em> is the military, with the section on \u201cFighting Each Other\u201d flinging the viewer from a World War I trench to a modern army base (where Michael Palin, the film\u2019s MVP, shines as a sergeant major fixated on marching up and down the square) and back to the first Zulu War. The class satire is strongest in the latter, where the massive casualties suffered by the rank-and-file soldiers pale in comparison with one pampered officer losing a leg. When the search for it peters out, a tuxedoed Gilliam steps into frame to introduce \u201cThe Middle of the Film,\u201d which confronts viewers with the bafflingly surreal \u201cFind the Fish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n