The “Life of Brian” uncovers the lunacy of 1st century Palestine through the film’s critique of Jewish sects and relationships with the Romans.  All the Jews in the movie are hoping to overthrow the Romans because they hate them but they are not sure why they hate them.  This can be seen in the scene where the leader of the FPJ says, “What have they given us in return?”  The mocking response is the Romans have given Jews many things like roads, order, wine, education, and public health.  Brian encounters the stereotype of Jews, disunity amongst them.  Each Jew has a different party name but all hate the Romans and the other Jewish parties.  For example, the Jews are always fighting over who had the idea first or what right to fight for.  This acts itself out when the two different Jewish groups kill each other over the same objective: kidnap Pilate’s wife and hold her for ransom.  The film also pokes fun at Jewish legalism as well.  The stoning scene is a critique of how Jewish legalism has no respect to context and has to follow this perfect letter of the law.  Another scene emphasizing such opinion is the request by the Jews to be crucified separating from the Samaritans.  Even at their death Jews follow the law by the book. 

The film seems to make fun of Jews more than Christians.  Prime example is the parody on the Sermon on the Mount and scenes following.  Brian accidently falls onto the platform with the other hopeful and crazily looking messiah figures jabbing about life and death.  He is asked to tell the crowd some wisdom, in which his message is rationalization and independence.  The mob, the Jews, who is actively seeking a messiah try to invest their hopes and dreams into Brian with talk about sandals and such.  Brian is chased into the wilderness by this mob, who wants to see miracles and signs of his identity.  They trick him into saying he is the messiah and then ask for food.  He points to a brush and the crowd is amazed at this find and calls it a miracle.  With these scenes, the film is presenting a critique against blind faith with Brian as the anti-messianic figure who just wants to be left alone.  The “miracle” emphasizes this blind faith of believers, who “have known many messiahs before” and are for sure Brian is one of them.  Perhaps, they like the Gospel writers took something ordinary and embellished it by investing their personal significance like this mob did. 




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