The initial scene in Life of Brian looks very similar to the Jesus’ birth in the gospel of Mark; three wise men follow a star to where the baby is born. However, there is confusion about who they actually find. The three wise men arrive at the baby Brian instead of Jesus who was in a manger nearby. This mess-up is what describes the movie’s main theme of mistaken identity. Brian finds himself in situations characteristic to the life story of Jesus. When Brian lands on the platform and has to preach in order to escape being caught by the Romans it is similar to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, except that Brian’s concepts do not make sense and once he evades danger he just wants to leave. The crowd then begins to follow him believing that he is the messiah and he has a secret (Gospel of Mark’s messianic secret). 

     This film pokes fun at first-century Palestine characteristics. Jewish legalism was extremely formalist and the stoning scene shows how they have no respect for context. The movie also demonstrates the extreme hatred between the Jews and the Romans; even though nobody in the movie knows why. The concept of the messiah is also uniquely portrayed in this film. Everyone was looking for a messiah and they were constantly looking for someone to be the messiah and to die for them. It was on the minds of everyone during first-century Palestine.

     In the gospels Jesus is only one of three crucifixions which raises the level of uniqueness of his death, but in the film Brian’s crucifixion is one of 139 dramatically decreasing his importance. The film also projects that the crucifixions were random arbitrary nature, that they didn’t care who was up on the cross. 

     This film makes you re-think the gospel Jesus by offering alternative explanations for the growth of Jesus’ sayings and his miracle traditions. For example the gospel Jesus knows he will die on the cross, but Brian tries to figure a way out of it. By doing this the film makes the death meaningless unlike the gospel which adds meaning to a meaningless death. It asks the question what if these things happened by chance and people just infused his words and actions with importance out of desperation for a messiah. What if it was just all a mistaken identity?




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