someone illuminate me (creepy side to this movie)

[deleted]

Perhaps a laugh track would have helped you?

"Any lie will find believers as long as you tell it with force."

I always felt the live liver transplant sketch always gave me the chills, hearing the man's screams while the other worker flirts with his wife.
Just made me have that nervous laugh of whether i should be laughing or not.

I know what you mean, it's the surrealism of the movie (and the particularly surreal "Find the Fish). I've always found the surrealism of this movie (and most other awesome Gilliam works) to be quite nightmarish.

Maybe it's because the mind of Terry Jones is a drk and sinister, yet comedic one. People forget that he directed this movie. Not Terry Gilliam. In fact, Gilliam's piece, which opens the movie, doesn't have a shred of creepiness to it, compared with the rest of the film and it's unpredictability.

Perhaps it's because there is no meaning to life.

I felt the same way as the OP when I first saw it. I ended up laughing a few times and couldn't quite place my finger on it. After more viewings I've come to really enjoy it, and in my opinion the unsettling feeling comes from the significantly dark and sinister themes they play with in these sketches. For most people I know (myself included), their first contact with Python came from Holy Grail, a very tame film compared to Meaning of Life. The darkest scene in Holy Grail is a bunny attacking and killing several people. Meaning of Life has significantly more realistic gore (the Zulu scene, the live operation, and Mr. Creosote's body exploding).

Meaning of Life also uses children in ways a lot of people would still consider taboo. We see them sing about sperm, and we see hundreds of kids led off for "scientific experiments". We see young boys in a sex ed class watching their teacher have sex in front of them. We see kids harshly beaten by adult rugby players.

Then there's the really weird like find the fish, or the feeling that the audience is getting pranked by the filmmakers as Eric Idle tells us to follow him "not much further" as he keeps walking on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

Anyway, that's what I think fuels this kind of unsettling feeling after seeing the film, but to me it's also what makes it so rewatchable, because they push just barely beyond comfortable in almost every single scene. It's kind of unique even for a Python film.

I'm watching it for the first time in a while right now and I agree. It's always funny of course, but it feels a little like The Wall or A Clockwork Orange.

A little has to do with the filming which is literally dark. That has a little to do with the era, but Monty Python tends to use very dark sets in general.

Plus the themes aren't exactly lighthearted. The jokes are dark and they're head-on with some serious themes. When you mix in the pokes at religion and the general idea that life is great it's going to be dark.

Plus there are scenes that feel like actual dream sequences. Lots of surreal landscapes, parts where characters look like they're not sure how they got there, and so on.

Great film and worth many viewings, but yeah it's the darkest one of the main trilogy.