If You Like Monty Python... by Zack Handlen

Author:Zack Handlen [Handlen, Zack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER010020 PERFORMING ARTS / Television / Guides & Reviews
ISBN: 9780879104320
Publisher: Limelight
Published: 2012-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

Peter Boyle and Madeline Kahn in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. (20th Century-Fox Pictures/Photofest © 20th Century-Fox)

5

At the Movies

Of course, you can’t watch television all the time. If thirty-minute blocks are starting to wear you down, you may want to consider the following, a sampling of some of the best cinema has to offer in the true Pythonite style.

There’s no denying Dr. Strangelove is a dark film, but it’s not a particularly uncomfortable one to watch; the characters are so absurd, and the circumstances so far removed from day-to-day reality, that it’s easy to feel detached from them. It’s not so easy to approach Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange with the same distance, although it seems like it should be. Adapted from a science fiction novel by Anthony Burgess, Orange takes place in a futuristic England, where hooligans run the streets in fancy clothes, and society at large has settled into a comfortable but ill-defined decay. But the rawness of the film’s violence and the unsettling conjunction of humor with awful acts can be difficult to watch.

And yet Orange is arguably Kubrick’s most entertaining film, due in no small part to the terrifying charisma of its leading man. Malcolm McDowell stars as Alex, a juvenile delinquent with a Napoleon complex and taste for classical music. He spends his nights beating up homeless men, stealing, and breaking into strangers’ houses to rape their wives, along with his two “droogs” (their slang word for “guys who like to accompany me when I murder, rape, and assault people”). Then one day, Alex’s droogs betray him to the police, and Alex goes to jail for his crimes, where he hears of a special new treatment that could win him an early release. It involves watching some movies and taking some drugs, and it’s certain to make him a better man.

Orange’s unique mixture of snide commentary, ultraviolence, and philosophy will appeal to anyone with an interest in challenging cinema. But Pythonites should find special appeal here because, in a way, Alex represents a possible endpoint to the troupe’s anarchic new form of comedy. In his world, Alex is a vile, hateful, destructive twerp, but the people surrounding him are nearly as despicable, and Alex’s vitality, charm, and intelligence make him stand above the crowd. Monty Python represented a new youth whose primary interest in sacred cows was making the best possible hamburgers, and while Orange is too complex to be simply a paranoid response to that anarchy, it does ask some pointed questions about where all that energy comes from; and how, in our quest to hermetically seal our society against evil, it’s possible to forget that sometimes “evil” is just a rough form of change.

Peter O’Toole is a very convincing actor. Over the course of his career, he’s played desert visionaries (Lawrence of Arabia), mercurial directors (The Stunt Man), genius scientists (Creator), and Henry II (The Lion in Winter and Becket). So Jesus doesn’t seem like all that much of a stretch—though in

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.