Watched on 09/6/27
モンティ・パイソン ライフ・オブ・
ブライアン ／ Monty Python's Life of Brian
アンドリューさんの選出作品 Andrew's selection
Warning: Plot and/or ending details might follow.
注意 : 以降に、作品の結末など核心部分が記述されています。
I thought long and hard before choosing “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” as my next selection for the club. How much of a great film is it, how well will the comedy translate, how much of the “history” would need further explanation, is an out-and-out comedy due in our random overview of movies? I really shouldn’t have thought so much – on the plus side, I loved it (again); on the minus side, well… the comedy just didn’t translate. I was stifling my own laughter so it wouldn’t echo in a largely laughless room. (And I’d even checked the comments on Amazon Japan, where I bought the Japanese-subtitled DVD, and there were 11 comments , all 5-starred, from Japanese contributors - but I guess they were already Python fans.)
“Life of Brian” – a comedy about zealots at the time of Christ so desirous of a Messiah figure that they’re ready to blindly follow any potential leader without thought, in this case Brian, who exhibits zero desire for, or leadership of, followers – is in my blood. I can’t remember when I first saw it. In the cinema, on video? I had a nagging worry that perhaps I hadn’t even seen it at all, that I’d just seen clips of every scene over the intervening 30-odd years since it was made. But I'm sure that is not the case, it’s just that multiple repeatings of scenes had made it into the stuff your life is made of rather than something you remember watching on a certain day. (“Blessed are the cheesemakers!?” was one colleague’s favourite repeated line at one place I worked; crowd – “We’re all individuals!”, individual – “I’m not”, is probably my own oft-repeated scene; “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!” seems just part of the English language.)
Comedy is perhaps the hardest genre to cross cultures intact. Visual comedy is obviously the most smooth, but although Brian has plenty of that, it’s quite a wordy film, deriving its humour from the word even when, say, John Cleese is mugging the joke at the only-men-allowed stoning scene, “Are there any women here today?” (a joke funny enough with women disguised as bearded men to get in on the stoning, doubly so with Python men playing women playing men). It seems that, to my film club friends, reading certain jokes in subtitled translation without either familiarity with the actors or chance to get the comedy-timing, is just not funny enough. I thought such jokes as “Blessed are the cheesemakers?” might die a death, as the pun on “peacemakers” makes it hard to understand in translation and without reference to words attributed to Christ, but I’d underestimated the difficulty of the rest.
Never mind… I loved it. Barring one or two descents to Carry On levels (Biggus Dickus is surely a somewhat overdone joke) its clever take on the gullibility of non-thinking followers ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous – with both being compliments in the context of comedy. Thirty years on it’s still a modern topic, both surprisingly and perilously so. It’s lighter aspects (the “What have the Romans ever done for us?” scene, for example) are just great while it’s darker ones (including the famous crucifixion end-song) still “edgy” and striking. Maybe it’s particularly British (such lyrics as “Life’s a piece of shit, when you look at it” in that end-song would somehow seem to suggest so, or is that just a stereotyped view, even from a Brit?) but it seems to me to hold a greater sway over a broader film culture with both its content and comedy.
Python members all perform well, the script is tight and constrained, and well-directed for narrative- and comedy-pacing by Python-member Terry Jones, while the look – thanks to the art-direction of Python Terry Gilliam, who went on, of course, to be director of such visually impacting films as “Brazil” – gives it a feel of a more substantial movie. Consequently, I’d unreservedly recommend it to both film fans and comedy ones – but just think twice if you’re relying on both subtitles AND an unfamiliar comedy landscape. And next time, I won’t think long and hard about my next film choice, just go with something more translatable.
- Andrew
今回、アンドリューの大絶賛を受けて紹介されたこの映画、ですが・・・。
純粋なJapaneseである他のメンバーに受け入れられず、アンドリューは寂しかったかもしれない。
でも江良さんの言う通り、comedyは役者を知ってて笑える部分は多々あるのだと思うし、
文化が違うと笑いも違うものだと。
でも、私は純粋に面白かった。勿論、ヨーロッパ文化のことはよく分からないし、
アンドリューほどは笑えなかったけれど、でも、下らない理由でキリストと間違えられた
主人公に、群衆が集って救いを求めるシーンは爆笑だったし、ぞっとしました。
「自分のことは自分で決めろ!」と、主人公が叫ぶ。まさにその通りだと唸った。
ラストも好きだし、クロスが配られるふざけたシーンも面白かった。
途中で「passion」のパロディーかと思ったけど、時代は合わない。
で、観終わって最初に感じたのは、この映画、恐れを知らない悪ガキ達がやりたい放題に描いた壁画みたいなものだな、と。そこにあるのは作り手の好む笑いと風刺、それから好奇心と情熱。
その壁画は、観る人を思いっきり笑わせたり、困らせたりする。それで上映禁止になったりもした。
ただ、日本人にとってはただの壁画ってことなのかも。笑えなくて、困らない場所にある異国の壁画。
藤平 久子
『ライフ オブ ブライアン』…、コメディ映画ではありましたが、すみません、ちっとも笑えなかった。
でもこれは決して作品の質ではないと思う。宗教感やタブー感が英国と日本では全く違うので、もともとこの種の作品には日本人は無理なのだと。あとはコメディは演者だということ。知っている役者じゃないと、おふざけをしていても白けてしまいます。
そういう意味では、コメディ映画の難しさについてはとても勉強になりました。感謝です。
僕もアンドリューに大笑いしてもらえる日本映画を探せと言われたら、きっと頭を抱えてしまいます。自信はありません。
江良 至