Shaun de Waal reviews the latest DVD releases to enjoy at home during winter.
Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy) (Nu Metro) 
“Is it AD yet?” “About a quarter to.” Thus spake some shepherds, watching their flocks by night, on some Judaean hillside in far-off times. Somewhere nearby, Brian is about to be born — Brian who will be mistaken for the messiah, and who will meet the same sticky end, though in his case the crucifixion is at least accompanied by the cheery strains of “Always look on the bright side of life …” Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy) is an oratorio, like Handel’s Messiah. That is one of the messiahs which it is not. It is based on Monty Python’s masterpiece, Life of Brian, a dizzying satire on the story of the gospels that, when it was still in “What is your next project?” stage, one of the Pythons famously named as Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory. Python Eric Idle and John du Prez (also conductor) have reworked Life of Brian as a musical piece, with Idle himself in the “baritonish” part, a host of excellent operetta-style singer-actors, a huge orchestra and a choir of what seems to be thousands. The music is pastiche, but it’s masterly pastiche, and it makes a wonderful base for the retelling of Brian’s hilarious story. There are shepherds’ paeans to their sheep, a chorus for The People’s Front of Judaea as rousing as anything by Orff (and it has the wonderful couplet: “I’m Judith and I’m from Judaea / I joined because I wanted to be freer”), and of course the delirious crucifixion anthem. Like Life of Brian, Not the Messiah satirises not only Christianity but also small-minded Little-Britishness, colonialism, anti-colonial movements (“What have the Romans ever done for us?”) and leftie political organisations and in-fighting. As far as the religious mockery goes, I’d love to know what people outside the Christian tradition, the Western classical-music tradition and the Pythonesque satiric-comic tradition would make of such jolly blasphemy — the Muslims who objected to the recent Zapiro cartoon, for instance. Do they find it as offensive as images of Muhammad? Might they find it simply unintelligible? Whatever the case, the combination of high-art pastiche and sublimely silly comedy makes Not the Messiah, in my view, some kind of pinnacle of Western civilisation.
An Education (Nu Metro) 
This is a beautifully observed story about a schoolgirl who has an affair with an older man in the early 1960s. Nick Hornby’s adaptation is note-perfect. At 16, Jenny’s world is still ruled by her parents’ nervy conservatism, but they are also ignorant, unworldly and easy prey for a suave bullshitter such as David (Peter Sarsgaard), who practically seduces their daughter under their noses. The period is evoked with a lovely production design, but it’s the performances that shine brightest. The leads are wonderful, Carey Mulligan (in her first big role, nogal!) as Jenny, all feisty and lusty but confused girl-woman; Sarsgaard able to charm us even as we see through him.
Zombieland (Nu Metro) 
Almost everyone on the planet has mutated into zombies; for all he knows, young Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), who is spending all his time avoiding them, is the only non-zombie left. But soon he bumps into a few other non-zombies, including a trigger-happy redneck — Woody Harrelson in the role he was born to play. Zombieland takes the classic American form of the road movie, with our heroes (and heroines) heading for California, where there may be a zombie-free enclave. There’s lots of zombie-shooting and much to laugh about, including a brilliant cameo from a star I won’t name in case you don’t know. Very entertaining.