The Holy Grail in Monty Python And The Holy Grail
Leave it to Monty Python to literally use the Holy Grail of the MacGuffin range for comedic entertainment. Yes, other movies have used that mythical object to motivate its characters – 1989’s Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, for example – but it is Monty Python that did it with such joyful, satirical abandon in 1975 that the MacGuffin as a plot device became part of the joke itself.
As a broad parody of King Arthur’s legendary quest for the Holy Grail, the Monty Python troupe delivered their first ‘real’ film that was not made up of a collection of sketches. This one contained an actual narrative, revolving around the MacGuffin.
In the film, King Arthur recruits his Knights Of The Round Table and God informs them that they must seek the Grail. On their journey, they encounter a Trojan Rabbit, the Knights Who Say Ni, a three-headed giant, sirens, and the Bridge Of Death at the Gorge Of Eternal Peril, among other challenges – and these are the scenarios that give rise to the laughs.
As the film progresses, however, reality continues to step in with its big heavy boot – as only Monty Python could portray. As a narrator in modern dress is murdered, the modern-day police begin an investigation, parallel to the action in the film, and it is this interference that ultimately brings King Arthur’s quest to an abrupt end. The monarch and his Knights never seize the Holy Grail, and the MacGuffin remains elusive. It is, at once, all and nothing.