King Arthur sets out on a quest to find the Holy Grail.
Doing for bunnies what Benchley and Spielberg did for Great Whites, and demolishing fourth walls with the glee of a cowboy builder, the Pythons’ second big screen outing is a hoot, a meandering delight that also firmly skewers the genial pointlessness of quests and kingship, medieval myth-making, and much else besides.
Arthur, King of the Britons (Graham Chapman) traverses the land he thinks he rules looking for the most impressive knights to join his round table at Camelot – before he is summoned by God himself to find the Holy Grail.
And linking the long, fascinating history of this sceptred isle while showcasing our historic castles, most politically literate peasants and ancient woods means this is also perfect educational family viewing. “That IS funny!” acknowledged my tween, wandering in as Arthur lopped off the Black Knight’s second arm, the sliced artery spurting red goo across a sun-dappled clearing.
Back in the 1990s, a strange courting ritual took hold at universities across the land among men between the ages of 18 and 21; the objects of their affection unable to escape, thanks to the glue-like properties of cider-and-black when in contact with student union floors, until the youth in question had exhausted his entire supply of quotes from Monty Python’s Life Of Brian, Holy Grail or Meaning of Life. It was even better if his name really was Tim.
It often worked. I mean, what young lady wouldn’t be overcome at being told her mother was a hamster, and getting a lift home on an invisible horse while her new beau made clip-clop noises?
And maybe it keeps the film relevant. After all in a post-truth world, so many activists seem to think if you repeat something enough times it becomes reality.
Who cares about spoilers here. You’ve probably seen the film, or your parents did and you’ve inherited detailed knowledge of the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, and how to weigh a witch, through cultural epigenetics. No, we shall merely wallow nostalgically in its greatness, while also enjoying the sudden ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail; where Arthur has assembled an army of knights to attack Castle Aarrgh, home of the Grail, before the 1970s rozzers arrive in a police car and arrest him and Bedevere the Wise (Terry Jones) for killing Frank the Historian earlier, and then the film camera gets shut off by one of the policemen. (In bold there for anyone who got here by googling “ending of Monty Python and The Holy Grail“.)
So, back to Arthur’s search for his new knights, and thence for the Grail, an edict issued by Terry Gilliam’s cartoon God himself (though surely if anyone knows where anything is, it’s God). En route Arthur and his squire Patsy (Gilliam) meet some of his subjects, though hardly anyone knows who he is and several directly repudiate his rule, and they’re not even the French ones.
Luckily they do eventually find some hopeful knightly candidates. Arthur’s new Round Table team includes Sir Lancelot the Brave (John Cleese), Sir Galahad the Pure (Michael Palin), Sir Robin the Not Quite So Brave as Sir Lancelot (Eric Idle), Sir Not Appearing In This Film (presumably later changing his his name by illuminated deed poll to Sir I’m Kicking Myself Now), and Sir Bedevere.
The older I get the shorter I like my movies, and this comes in at a highly agreeable, joke-crammed 91 minutes. Every Python plays several parts, with Python TV and movie stalwarts Carol Cleveland (as both identical twins ruling Castle Anthrax) and Connie Booth (the weighed witch) also appearing. Has it aged badly? Well nowadays you can’t call your fighting opponent a pansy like you could in 932A.D. (oops, I mean C.E.)
The skit-like nature of Holy Grail, interspersed with Terry Gilliam’s bizarre animations and that fourth wall breaking is like being in a particularly vivid dream, only for once it’s one that other people might actually be interested in hearing about.
Among the skits the knights get their own slots, which are generally much shorter than your average Dark Ages epic poem, though epic poems also get their own slot, as Sir Robin has to listen to his own minstrel warbling along to a lute about the increasingly gruesome ways his master might die. It’s one of my favourite bits, one of the little extras the film is stuffed with that you may have entirely forgotten about between your student days and a 2024 rewatch.
I’m not sure one can critique the acting, or indeed the accents, in a Monty Python movie. Tim the Enchanter, happily blowing up rocks and cairns around the killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, has a Scottish accent that disappears so many times he’s like a reverse Gerard Butler. Though I did enjoy Arthur’s naïveté and idealism, and his pristine outfit – truly one recognises a king because he “hasn’t got shit all over him” (until the end anyway).
Unlike the later Life of Brian, Holy Grail wasn’t banned anywhere, I guess because British historians are so desperate for anyone to watch anything historical they’re not that fussed whether you could actually get coconut shells in 10th century Wales for your clip-clopping, and if you could whether such access was swallow breed-dependent. And from what I can tell it’s avoided being the subject of those “All the historical inaccuracies in this thoroughly enjoyable movie, making it slightly less enjoyable for nitpickers, LISTED” articles.
Maybe it really was ahead of its time. Nowadays we’re constantly hearing that the Dark Ages weren’t actually that dark, but instead were times of modernity and flourishing artistic development, and in between the mud, plague victims and that impromptu witch trial Holy Grail boasts songs, a high-kicking dance and a castle run by women.
Still, is Holy Grail entirely accurate? Well every generation rewrites history in its own image — it wouldn’t surprise me if we were now crediting Leonardo Da Vinci with inventing an early version of the atomic bomb, and claiming his Vitruvian Man drawing is a prototype for Barbie’s Ken — and the 1970s were extremely weird.
Watch the trailer for Monty Python and the Holy Grail: