Originally conceptualized as a short animated sketch which would be used late in the third Monty Python film, Terry Gilliam's "The Crimson Permanent Assurance" eventually grew into a 16 minute live action short.
It was then tagged onto the introduction of "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life" with a note explaining that it is a "short-feature presentation." After this note fades, the short then begins in earnest, a narrator explaining that due to its dire financial situation, the Permanent Assurance Company has been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America.
What follows is a wonderfully imaginative riff on Burt Lancaster's "The Crimson Pirate", the subjugated and downtrodden workers of the Permanent Assurance Company, who slavishly row oars to the drums of their corporate masters, staging a revolt and forcing their bosses off the edges of planks (which stretch out from their office building windows). The employees then convert their office building into a pirate ship and head West, attacking the corporate headquarters of the Very Big Corporation of America.
Once the employees defeat their tyrannical and unethical employers, the once timid and pale office staff turn into a gang of seasoned pirates, using staplers and stationary as weapons, filing cabinets as cannons and various other office supplies as tools of nautical mayhem. Pretty soon our heroes are riding their building – yes their building literally is a pirate ship – all across the planet, wreaking havoc on various other mega-corporations before suddenly falling off the edge of the world.
The narrator then says that our heroes died because they were sailing based on "the wrong theory of the shape of the world". Whether this is a simple joke or yet more satire - the antiquated theories and rebellions of the political left proved useless in the modern era – is left up to the audience. Either way, the resistance falls off the edge of the planet and the world of "Brazil" follows immediately after.
10/10 – Where else have you seen a 19th century office building turn into a giant pirate ship and attack the gleaming glass towers of modern capital? Funny, fast, spectacular and wonderfully imaginative, this short is as good as Gilliam's best work and condenses a number of the themes which he'd revisit in "Brazil".
Worth multiple viewings.
It was then tagged onto the introduction of "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life" with a note explaining that it is a "short-feature presentation." After this note fades, the short then begins in earnest, a narrator explaining that due to its dire financial situation, the Permanent Assurance Company has been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America.
What follows is a wonderfully imaginative riff on Burt Lancaster's "The Crimson Pirate", the subjugated and downtrodden workers of the Permanent Assurance Company, who slavishly row oars to the drums of their corporate masters, staging a revolt and forcing their bosses off the edges of planks (which stretch out from their office building windows). The employees then convert their office building into a pirate ship and head West, attacking the corporate headquarters of the Very Big Corporation of America.
Once the employees defeat their tyrannical and unethical employers, the once timid and pale office staff turn into a gang of seasoned pirates, using staplers and stationary as weapons, filing cabinets as cannons and various other office supplies as tools of nautical mayhem. Pretty soon our heroes are riding their building – yes their building literally is a pirate ship – all across the planet, wreaking havoc on various other mega-corporations before suddenly falling off the edge of the world.
The narrator then says that our heroes died because they were sailing based on "the wrong theory of the shape of the world". Whether this is a simple joke or yet more satire - the antiquated theories and rebellions of the political left proved useless in the modern era – is left up to the audience. Either way, the resistance falls off the edge of the planet and the world of "Brazil" follows immediately after.
10/10 – Where else have you seen a 19th century office building turn into a giant pirate ship and attack the gleaming glass towers of modern capital? Funny, fast, spectacular and wonderfully imaginative, this short is as good as Gilliam's best work and condenses a number of the themes which he'd revisit in "Brazil".
Worth multiple viewings.