And now for dessert
When Michael met Malcolm.
There’s bit where Cleese says he knew Palin was steaming. I like that because I’ve heard Palin talking about how furious he was – he did a book talk and signing here a couple of decades ago, and someone must have asked about the Muggeridge encounter: he became quite energetic about how foul Muggeridge was and how angry it made him.
The bishop looks and sounds more like a late-night TV parody of a bishop than a real one.
They’re both a bit parodic, mostly because of the accents. It’s much like the difference between the Queen & Priss Choss v the next generation. That kind of extremely plummy accent has gone out of fashion.
Yes, a couple of caricatures. It’s not just the accents, it’s the affectation of weary, schoolmasterly indifference and condescension. If, as Muggeridge said, no true Christians would have their faith affected by the film, why make such a song and dance about it? I must say that I don’t think that Cleese & Palin were entirely ingenuous in their claim that the film was merely to make people laugh. And I wish that Cleese had pulled out out a few of those quotations he says he had prepared in his pocket.
But Merry Christmas to all, as Scrooge said!
Perhaps I should say that the film was aimed at precisely such pompous fools as Stockton & Muggeridge – and that of course has nearly everything to do with their response to it.
Nice of them to confirm their pomposity on screen.
Yes, they did that all right! Thy way Muggeridge pronounces ‘the Incarnation’- I don’t think C.S. Lewis or some of my Catholic acquaintances could better that! It’s magical, it’s mystical, it’s inexplicable, it’s a scandal to the heathen and to mere hoi pollloi like you lot! Merely to pronounce the word is to bask in its sacredness! I found Stockwood’s (sorry, got the name wrong in an earlier comment) final little attempt to stick in the shiv – ‘thirty pieces of silver’ – disgraceful. I’m afraid had I been Cleese or Palin I should have got up and stuck his crucifix down his throat. I’m not a very nice person.
That look that Palin and Cleese exchanged when he said it.
I was still a Catholic when I watched it, and thought it was funny because it was mocking religion rather than Jesus. For a Catholic it could be seen as a movie that revealed the misunderstandings (“blessed are the cheesemakers” heard instead of peacemakers by people at the back of the crowd) that led to protestantism. Hyperbole can be an illustrator of a concept.
But, these two wanted to let everyone know that religious feelings are paramount and anything that laughs at the religious concepts is hurtful, nasty, and low, and that if it were up to them and if Cleese and Palin were schoolboys, they should be rightly paddled.