• The Meaning of Life is anthology film- there’s a tying bind throughout –reflexively pointing out this is the middle of the film, end of the film, etc. It plays well to the talents of the Monty Python trope’s experience working in short form
  • “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” opening segment is really separate from the film. It is Gilliam’s. It is a 16 minute little film, had its own crew, soundstage. Gilliam is clearly sketching for Brazil here with the rows of desks, corporate prison, paperwork and suits. This is also probably the best segment of this film. It is a spoof of an old Errol Flynn pirate movie. John Du Prez’s rousing score pays homage to the revelatory work of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. There’s no dialogue here really. Big music, action, the old men as pirates. It includes miniatures (great work) of skyscrapers (Brazil again).

“The Crimson Permanent Assurance” opening segment is really separate from the film. It is Gilliam’s. It is a 16 minute film, had its own crew, soundstage. Gilliam is clearly sketching for Brazil here with the rows of desks, corporate prison, paperwork and suits. This is also probably the best segment of this film

  • The remaining film is 90 minutes. There is animation and comic songs. The trope is smart to start the film with not only the Crimson segment, but the miracle of birth and then the Palin segment with the massive Catholic family is inspired as well. It goes into a big children’s choir Busby Berkeley dance scene. The Protestant joke at 15 minutes with the Catholic kids across the street (seen through the window) slowing exiting their house one by one is hilarious and a nice little visual joke.

a big children’s choir Busby Berkeley dance scene

then the Palin segment with the massive Catholic family is inspired as well

  • It is hard not to think of the centrally themed anthology film like Woody’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask in1972. Like Woody, the trope loves spoofing heavy topics like religion, sex, Bergman (death here again as a talking character).

It is hard not to think of the centrally themed anthology film like Woody’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask in1972. Like Woody, the trope loves spoofing heavy topics like religion, sex, Bergman (death here again as a talking character).

  • A very nice football to war editing transition between segments
  • The film seems to lose steam in the back half and ultimately just sort of ends with a thud
  • Recommend but closer to the fringe of the archives certainly than the top 10 of 1983