Monty Python and the Holy Grail Essay -- essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Monty Python and the Holy Grail† is a satiric comedy about the quest of King Arthur. The movie starts out with Arthur, King of the Britons, looking for knights to sit with him at Camelot. He finds many knights including Sir Galahad the pure, Sir Lancelot the brave, the quiet Sir Bedevere, and Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir Lancelot. Through satire and parody of certain events in history (witch trials, the black plague) they find Camelot, but after literally a quick song and dance they decide that they do not want to go there. While walking away, God (who seems to be grumpy) come to them from a cloud and tells them to find the Holy Grail. They agree and begin their search. While they search for the Grail, scenes of the knight's tales appear and the reasons behind their names. Throughout their search, they meet interesting people and knights along the way. Most of the characters die; some through a killer rabbit (which they defeat with the hol y hand grenade), others from not answering a question right from the bridge of Death, or die some other ridiculous way. In the end, King Arthur and Sir Bedevere are left and find the Castle Arrrghhh where the Holy Grail is. They are met by some French soldiers who taunted them earlier in the film and were not able to get into the castle. The movie ends with both King Arthur and Sir Bedevere being arrested for killing a real-life man who was a historian. In the movie, the three main types of comedy I recognized were farce, parody, and satire. Farce is comedy designed to provoke the audience into simple, hearty laughter and often uses highly exaggerated or caricatured character types and puts them into improbable and ludicrous situations. It also makes use of broad verbal humor and physical horseplay. Some examples of farce in the movie are: †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the beginning of the movie, you hear the sound of music and horses. However, it turns out that it was not horses at all; it was the sound of King Arthur’s squire pounding two coconut halves together to make the sound of horses galloping. They then go on to confront two soldiers at the castle gates o invite their lord to be apart of the round table .they approach a castle and are quickly confronted by soldiers on top of the castle walls. The soldiers go on to question about their mode of transportation. King Arthu... ...arody is the imitation if a work of literature, art, or music for amusement or instruction. Parody usually uses exaggeration or inappropriate subject matter to make a serious style seem ridiculous. Some examples parodies in the movie are: †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The comedic affect of the scene where Arthur and his men are kept away from the castle by farm animal warfare is a parody to when King Uther Pendragon attacked the Duke of Cornwall’s castle and was kept off with fire, soldiers and other one would expect in combat. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There was a scene where King Arthur and his knights hid inside of a wooden rabbit to invade the castle. This was a parody of the wooden Trojan horse used to invade the Greeks in the Illiad.The comedic affect was delivered when the king and his men got out of the horse before they even got into the castle. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There were also scenes ever so often a historian would pop up and give you a brief narrative about what was going on in the movie. This was a parody of all the historians that covered the story of Arthur. The comedic affect was delivered when Arthur killed the historian at the end of the movie.