10 Best Life of Brian Moments

8. Trying to Hear the Sermon on the Mount

“Oh, it’s blessed are the meek! Oh, I’m glad they’re getting something, they’ve had a hell of a time.”

As Jesus (Kenneth Colley, A.K.A. Admiral Piett) speaks to his followers, we join a group of spectators standing just a little too far back to make out what the Son of God is actually saying, exacerbating a squabble between a smartarse Mr Cheeky (Eric Idle) and the man he will dub Mr Big Nose (Palin).

We’ve all had those moments where you arrive to a performance and find you’re in the worst seats in the house. Imagine if that happened with Jesus’ most famous sermon? Miraculously, there is never usually a voice projection problem in Biblical epics despite their scale, and therefore the Pythons’ idea that those at the back think that Christ is saying “the sheep shall inherit the Earth” is an incredibly amusing moment.

While some are there to hear their messiah’s message, talking among the group results in personal insults being thrown, especially by Idle’s character aggravating Palin’s (“Better keep listening, might be a bit about blessed are the big noses”) which eventually results in the wrong man’s wife being punched and everyone missing the rest of what Jesus has to say.  

7. Latin Lessons 

“What’s this then? “Romanes eunt domus”? “People called Romanes, they go the ‘ouse”?”

Having been recruited by the freedom fighting group the People’s Front of Judea to commit acts of protest against the Roman occupation of their country, Brian begins to graffiti his chosen slogan on the side of a temple, until a Centurion (Cleese) catches him and makes sure he is using the correct Latin grammar.

It’s a scene that would not look at all out of place on ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’, with John Cleese playing one of his usual strict and scary private schoolmaster-type characters and turning a tense confrontation into something more farcically comedic.

Brian was intending to write “Romans go home” but he’s not very good at his Latin tenses and sentence structure, so the Centurion grabs the inattentive student by the ear and takes him through a painful language lesson until he gets it right. When the third person plural, present imperative sentence is finally to his liking, the Centurion orders Brian to write it out one hundred times, which of course pleases the People’s Front of Judea but results in Brian being chased from the scene by soldiers (who didn’t see the impromptu language lesson) the next morning.

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6. Hiding from the Centurion

“You haven’t given us chance to hide!”

After eluding his Roman pursuers, Brian returns to the PFJ’s hideout. This prompts the group to take to some not especially inventive hiding places as a squad of soldiers undertake ineffectual search and their Centurion (Cleese) stands outside trying and failing to make the unflappable owner Mathias uncomfortable. 

In addition to featuring the film’s only act of overt censorship (Cleese calls Brian a “klutz” but clearly mouths something much ruder), this scene is a great combination of sight gags (the PFJ crouched under tables or behind lamps and curtains), surreal ideas (many more soldiers coming in and out of the house than could conceivably fit in it, always on fast-forward), and proof of the classic rule of 3 in comedy. The soldiers arrive, search and leave, then come back, find a spoon and leave, before arriving a third time and causing a panicked Brian to fall out of the back window and accidentally begin his journey towards being proclaimed a saviour.

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