Brian's Mother: He's not the Messiah: he's a very naughty boy! Now go away!

There are too many delights to be found in Python for one to hope to even begin to enumerate them all. This observation of Brian's Mother is apparently one of the most famous and best-loved lines in modern cinema, and it's worth asking why. Like many apparent extreme radicals in the Arts, Python turns out on closer inspection to have a deep respect for classical forms. Here we see a wonderful case of dramatic irony. We, the audience, know that Brian is not the Messiah (this was made clear in the nativity scene at the beginning, where the Magi leave Brian's crib for the crib of the real Messiah) but it is quite clear that Brian's mother does not see the significance of this scene and altho' she has a pretty shrewd idea that Brian is not the Messiah she doesn't actually know it. Unlike us! Dramatic irony is surely the basis of the appeal of this line. [actually, i'm no longer convinced. It's in part Bathos.]

There is a delightful sequel to this. Malcolm Muggeridge was invited onto a TV Arts programme to discuss Brian. There had been a showing before the discussion of course, but Muggeridge missed the beginning of it — in particular the nativity scene (wherein it is made clear that Brian is not the Messiah) — because of a good lunch, and then (having completely missed the crucial point) went on TV afterwards to complain about the blasphemous nature of the film... thereby inadvertently providing us with another piece of dramatic irony: he doesn't know that Brian isn't the Messiah but we do. Nature imitating art. Would he have appreciated this line if he had actually seen the whole of the film? One suspects not: Brian would probably have exhausted his limited critical faculties in any case.

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