Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Terry Jones’s film took the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1983, one step below the Palme d’Or, which went that year to Shohei Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama. The jury was chaired by William Styron. At BAFTA the next year "Every Sperm Is Sacred" was nominated for Best Original Song and lost to the song from An Officer and a Gentleman. The film does not open with the sketches. A separate short by Terry Gilliam runs first, The Crimson Permanent Assurance. It was planned as an animated passage inside the feature until Gilliam talked the others into shooting it live. The feature itself is 90 minutes; with the short in front the programme comes to 107 minutes. One of the boardrooms the short raids opens again later, inside the feature. Michael Palin has called the writing cumbersome: plenty of material, no carrying story like Holy Grail and Life of Brian, so they took the loosest frame available. Mr Creosote was shot at Porchester Hall, where the fake vomit had to be cleared on the last day because a wedding was booked hours later. A good fit if the loose joins between episodes read as a choice rather than a failure. Not for anyone wanting measured comedy from a film Ireland banned outright and the BBFC first rated 18.