Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Movie vs. Legend

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Greetings folks, I am Scott Telek, author of The Swithen, the book series that remains completely faithful to the medieval legend of King Arthur, and because of that, I’ve spent the bulk of my time for the past fifteen years studying and writing about the Arthurian legend. And obviously, no serious discussion of the Arthurian legend can be considered legitimate without mention of perhaps the most influential Arthurian film of all time, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

And what we’re going to do here is discuss how the movie relates to the actual Arthurian legend. So it’s not about whether it’s a good movie or not—because we know it’s a good movie—we’re talking about how much it does or does not relate to the medieval Arthurian legend. 

Now we all know that quote about how explaining a joke takes away the humor of it. So while the movie is funny, this video is not going to be that funny. So let us temper our expectations!

When I started getting into the Arthurian legend I was curious about what movies have been made from it, and to my surprise, often listed as one of the best and most faithful adaptations is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Now I have another video on my channel called “Why are there no good King Arthur movies?” and, short version, the legend is simply too long and involved, as well as just too weird, to cut it down into a successful standalone movie, or even a TV series. 

It is a true saga, and as such, it must remain huge for it to work. That’s why I’m taking 25 novels in my book series to tell the full story—and I’m leaving a lot OUT. So let’s dive in and discuss what makes Monty Python and the Holy Grail not only one of the best Arthurian adaptations, but one of the most faithful to the original material. 

The first thing to understand is that Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the movie, does not, strictly speaking, adapt any particular part of the Arthurian legend. That is, it’s not like, “Oh, the Black Knight is a parody of this part, and the Knights who say Ni are referring to that part.” The whole thing is a large scale parody of the entire Arthurian legend, and as such, it just doesn’t align one to one. Terry Jones, one of the ensemble and a co-director of the film, was himself a Medieval scholar and wrote a very well-respected book on Chaucer, so he has the brains to create a smart parody of the whole thing without having to focus on just one element. 

Swashbuckling movies

Another big thing to understand up front is that the movie is not only making fun of the Arthurian legend. It is also making fun of other movies about medieval times, specifically how self-serious they often are. This came out in 1975, so they would have been mocking films such as The Knights of the Round Table, which is so very dreadful I could not even make it through, or even the film of the musical Camelot, which came out in 1967, but would have still been hugely influential. All of them tend to be overly serious, with everyone straining as hard as they can to be noble and valiant. 

The movie is also making fun of film itself, especially with the ludicrous music, and other things like government bureaucracy and a lot of things that have nothing at all to do with the Arthurian legend. For example, the coconuts used to the sound of horse hooves is a something we know they actually used in movies to create the sound effect of horses hooves, so having it be here right out in the open is also sort of a meta joke about medieval movies, not specifically the Arthurian legend.

Self-seriousness

So movies about the Arthurian legend up to this time were painfully self-serious and insufferably noble, and let’s face it, sometimes the Arthurian legend is, too. Everyone’s standing around trying to be as valiant as possible, everything is as deadly serious as can be, and there’s just not a lot of humor, even when the story itself is utterly ridiculous. 

This makes it funny just to poke holes in the wall of seriousness, so when they’re doing things like pretending to ride horses or saying Camelot is a silly place, it’s just funny! Even now we’re used to fantasy things like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings,having this aura that it is all so monumentally significant, so this whole thing, the silly voices, the ludicrous adventures, it’s all just hilarious to treat this sacred material this way.

The Dark Ages

The other thing that really strikes when you watch this film is that everything is very dirty, the people are unclean and have bad teeth, and the castles are cruddy and filled with dirt. This is one of those things that makes this movie one of the most accurate to the Arthurian legend, because it’s supposedly taking place in the year 500, what we used to call the Dark Ages, and things are NOT clean and tidy. When we see medieval movies, they all have perfectly straight, clean white teeth and are all kissing each other and—like, do you ever think about what kind of BREATH they actually had? And would their clothes be all perfectly clean and their whites their whitest? No, they would not. So this movie actually depicts the overall nastiness of the time pretty well.

The Plague / The Witch Trial

The black death, AKA the plague is not in the Arthurian legend, but of course does loom large in anyone’s thoughts of medieval England. Also there are no witch trials whatsoever in the Arthurian legend. So these parts just kind of play on British history, but don’t really reference anything in the Arthurian legend. 

Now, there are a lot of things in the movie that do have roots in the legend, even if they still don’t necessarily line up on to one. So let’s go into those.

The French Soldier

The Frenchman who hilariously taunts King Arthur and his knights doesn’t really reference any specific part of the Arthurian legend, and is probably just referring to the longstanding French-British rivalry. At the same time, it does point to a very key background element of the Arthurian legend, which is the split between the British and French characters in the story. Arthur and Sir Gawain and others are of British descent, and Lancelot and others are of French descent, and at the end of the saga these factions turn on each other. So it does get at something very true about the legend, but at the same time I suspect it wasn’t written with that specifically in mind.

Nobility and honor

A huge thing in the Arthurian world is nobility and honor. Since it’s this generally lawless world, the knights are all kind of competing with each other to be the most worthy and honorable, and in the legend it is deadly serious—so serious that it becomes kind of laughable. So the minstrels who go along behind Sir Robin saying that he is cowardly and runs away from danger are using a form that usually discusses how brave a knight is, but basically making fun of him. The other really on-the-nose parody nobility and honor is of course the Knights of the Round Table song, which makes fun of how the knights never quit and fight to the end, and their over-the-top insane bravery. 

The Black Knight

Now the Knights of the Round Table are all supposed to be impossibly brave and valiant and fight to the death, and the sequence with the Black Knight is kind of making fun of that. 

Like for example, at a certain point in the legend, Arthur says: “I would rather die a thousand times, if I could, than say a single word that anyone could consider cowardice.” At a certain point Lancelot offers to fight with one arm tied behind his back, and several times knights say that they would rather die than give up or be shamed, so the black knight, who gets all his arms and legs hacked off but still won’t admit defeat, makes fun of that.

Knights who say Ni

The Knights who say Ni doesn’t seem to reference a specific thing, but it does refer to two very common elements of the Arthurian legend, one of which is very colorfully named knights with strange customs, and the other is odd little quests that the knights are sent on. In terms of bizarre names and identities, in the legend there’s the King with the Hundred Knights, Dodinel the Wild Man, the Red Knight of the Red Lands and the Green Knight of the Green lands, the Lord of the Distant Isles, the Knight with Two Swords, and one of my favorites, the Ugly Hero. 

Their sending King Arthur out to get a shrubbery is also reminiscent of certain quests the Arthurian knights need to go on, like to bring back a stag or of course, the quest for the Holy Grail, but more often than not, the Arthurian knights aren’t after a thing, but they need to complete a some trials to free a castle of a curse, to find out why a  knight is depressed or to assist someone who has been wronged, and usually those end up leading into very long and involved adventures.

Quest for the Holy Grail

In the legend, God himself does not appear and tell Arthur to seek the Holy Grail, but it is similar in that a vision of the Grail appears and fills the knights with joy and awe, and also manifests their favorite food. Then afterward they all decide to go seek it. One thing most people don’t know is that Arthur himself does NOT want the knights to go seek the Grail, because he knows it will spell the end of the Knights of the Round Table. 

It is also not a great thing in the legend, because the knights used to have unity and brotherhood, but on the quest they all go on their separate paths, and they are now seeking a symbol of virtue, rather than virtue for its own sake. And by the way, 99 percent of the knights either die or are defeated on the quest, so it is not the great triumph we often hear it is. 

By the way, every single mention you ever hear of the Holy Grail, as in “the Holy Grail of Internet marketing,” or “the Holy Grail of juicy cheeseburgers” or whatever, every single mention refers back to the Arthurian legend.

The Rabbit of Caerbannog, AKA the Killer Rabbit

The Rabbit of Caerbannog, AKA the Killer Rabbit, if one of the biggest laughs in the film, but doesn’t so much have a clear antecedent in the legend. In the legends, the knights don’t often slay monsters, that might be more thinking of epic poems like Beowulf, in which our hero has to slay an awful creature attacking his village. But one theme that keeps coming back in the Arthurian legend is that things are often not what they seem, and things that look easy can be very difficult, so the idea that what looks like a harmless bunny is actually a vicious beast does kind of carry a theme the legend. It’s also another parody of how the knights are supposed to be so fearless and brave and never back down, so to see them shouting “Run away!” as they flee is hilarious.

The Prince rescued by Lancelot

The effeminate prince that does not want to get married and draws Lancelot in to save him is fairly on target for the legend, especially how maniacally Lancelot and his incredible prowess and bravery is constantly lionized. The idea of Lancelot charging in and killing so many people is also kind of on point, because often Lancelot does leap in to rescue someone and kill a bunch of people before actually asking questions and understanding the larger situation. It just happens that in the legend, Lancelot is usually always right and is never questioned. 

The Bridge of Death

The bridge of death is fairly true to the legend in that there are several perilous crossings in the Arthurian legend, and many times there is someone there refusing to let you cross, or demanding a battle if you do cross. So it is kind of accurate! Not much more to say about it.

Tim the Enchanter

Finally, we get to Tim the Enchanter. We knew Merlin had to show up sometime, right? The idea of naming this character Tim is a funny reaction to the florid and colorful names in the actual legend. It’s a bit accurate to the legend because Merlin’s origins are pagan and he was originally cast as a wild man who lived in the woods, so his portrayal here is pretty right on. The long stretch he spends just making explosions is also accurate to Merlin being a bit of an arrogant showoff, definitely an aspect of how he appears in the legend. 

Alrighty, that’s about it. I hope this helped you appreciate the movie more by understanding how it relates to the actual Arthurian legend. Check out some of my other videos here if you want to learn more about the Arthurian legend, and check out my book series if you want to dive into fun and readable books that retell the authentic medieval legend of King Arthur. Thanks for watching, and see you later!