Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - Plot

Plot

The film begins with a stand-alone 17-minute supporting feature entitled The Crimson Permanent Assurance (directed by Terry Gilliam). A group of elderly office clerks in a small accounting firm rebel against their emotionlessly efficient, yuppie corporate masters. They commandeer their building, turn it into a pirate ship, and sail into a large financial districts, where they raid and overthrow a large multinational corporation.

The film proper consists of a series of distinct sketches, broken into seven chapters.

Part I – The Miracle Of Birth

• A woman in labour is taken into a hospital delivery room, where she is largely ignored by doctors (Cleese and Chapman) and nurses, who are more concerned with using the hospital's most expensive equipment to impress the hospital's administrator (Palin).
• In Yorkshire, a Roman Catholic man (Palin) loses his employment. He goes home to his wife (Jones) and an impossible number of children, where he discusses the church's opposition to the use of contraception, leading into the musical number "Every Sperm Is Sacred". Watching this unfold, a Protestant man (Chapman) proudly lectures his wife (Idle) on their church's tolerance towards having intercourse for fun, although his frustrated wife points out that they never do.

Part II – Growth and Learning

• A school master (Cleese) and chaplain (Palin) conduct a nonsensical Anglican church service in an English public school. The master lectures the boys on excessively detailed school etiquette regarding the school cormorant, and hanging clothes on the correct peg. In a subsequent class, the schoolboys (Idle, Palin, Jones, Chapman and others) watch in boredom as the master gives a sex education lesson, by physically demonstrating techniques with his wife (Patricia Quinn). Later, a team of boys is beaten – physically and on the scoreboard – in a violent rugby match against the masters. One of the schoolboys, Biggs (Jones), gets up wearily and covered in mud. The scene then cuts to Part III.

Part III – Fighting Each Other

• A World War I officer (Jones) attempts to rally his men (Chapman, Gilliam, Palin, Idle, and Cleese) to find cover during an attack, but is hindered by their insistence on celebrating his birthday, complete with presents and cake.
• A blustery army RSM (Palin) attempts to drill a platoon of men, among them Perkins (Idle) and Coles (Chapman), but ends up left alone when he dismisses each to pursue leisure activities.
• In 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War in Natal, a devastating attack by Zulus is dismissed in lieu of a far more pressing matter: one of the officers, Atkinson (Idle), has had his leg bitten off during the night. The military doctor (Chapman) hypothesises that, despite not being native to Africa, a tiger might be the perpetrator. Ainsworth (Cleese), Packenham-Walsh (Palin) and a sergeant (Jones) form a hunting party, which encounters two suspicious men (Idle and Palin) dressed in two halves of a tiger suit, who attempt to assert their innocence through a succession of increasingly feeble excuses as to why they are dressed as a tiger.
• A mustached man in a Zulu costume (Gilliam) then introduces the middle of the film.

The Middle of the Film

• A woman (Palin), as if on a talk-show called "The Middle of the Film" introduces a segment called "Find The Fish" – a brief surreal piece in which a drag queen (Chapman), a gangly long-armed man (Jones), and an elephant-headed butler eerily challenge the audience to find a fish in the scene.

Part IV – Middle Age

• A middle-aged American couple (Idle as the wife and Palin as the husband) heads to a dungeon-themed Hawaiian restaurant at a holiday resort. They are presented with a menu of conversation topics by their waiter (Cleese with an American accent), and choose philosophy and the meaning of life. Their awkward and generally uninformed conversation quickly grinds to a halt, and they send it back, complaining "This conversation isn't very good."

Part V – Live Organ Transplants

• Two paramedics (Chapman and Cleese) arrive at the doorstep of Mr Brown (Gilliam), a card-carrying organ donor, to claim his liver, gruesomely operating on him against his will. Cleese's paramedic unsuccessfully attempts to chat up Mrs Brown (Jones), then requests her liver as well. She initially declines, but after a man (Idle) sings a song about man's insignificance in the universe ("The Galaxy Song"), she agrees.
• In a large corporate boardroom, a businessman straight-forwardly summarises his two-part report on the meaning of life: that the human soul must be "brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation", which rarely happens; and that "people aren't wearing enough hats." This is followed by an attempted takeover of the building by the Crimson Permanent Assurance from the short feature.
  

Part VI – The Autumn Years

• A posh restaurant, complete with a pianist (Idle, singing "The Penis Song"), is visited by Mr. Creosote (Jones), an impossibly fat man in his autumn years. He swears at the unflappable maître d' (Cleese), vomits copiously, and orders and finishes an enormous meal and a huge quantity of beer and wine – to the disgust of other patrons. After finishing, the maître d' offers him a small after-dinner mint, before running and hiding to watch Creosote explode, showering the restaurant with human entrails and vomit. Afterwards, two of the restaurant's staff offer their own thoughts on the meaning of life. The maître d' converses with cleaning lady Maria (Jones) followed by waiter Gaston (Idle) leading the viewer to the countryside where he was born; realizing that the audience is unamused, he angrily dissmisses them and walks off.

Part VII – Death

• A condemned man (Chapman) is allowed to choose the manner of his execution: being chased off the edge of a cliff by a horde of topless women.
• The Grim Reaper (Cleese) visits an isolated country house, and finds himself invited into a dinner party. Not knowing who he is, the dinner guests spend a lot of time arguing with him before finally being persuaded to shuffle off their mortal coils.
• The dinner guests arrive in Heaven, a bright Las Vegas-style hotel where every day is Christmas. In a large auditorium filled with characters from throughout the movie, a cheesy Tony Bennett-like lounge singer (Chapman) performs the song "Christmas in Heaven".

The End of the Film

• The hostess from "the Middle of the Film" is handed an envelope containing the meaning of life, and nonchalantly reads it out:

Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.