JinRoz
For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!
SpunkySelfTwitter
It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.
Grimossfer
Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
Almost ten years before "The Crimson Permanent Assurance", Terry Gilliam began his career directing another short film named "Miracle of Flight". Here he returns to the genre, though no animation, but live action instead. This effort managed a BAFTA-nomination for Best Short film, but came up short against a film named "Goodie-Two-Shoes", which has pretty much vanished into oblivion by now.But not so The Crimson Permanent Assurance. It deals with an office full of elderly workers. Everybody seems to be working as fast as they can without enjoying it, almost like galley slaves. When one of the bunch is fired by the foreman, the situation escalates. His colleagues rise to the occasion and take over. As they turn the building into a pirate-ship they start sailing the seas and we get to accompany them on their journey which includes among other things, entering and taking over an enemy company. It's a good film that profits a lot from a truly smart idea and the good execution of it. It's certainly one of Gilliam's best works and a must-see for every Monty Python enthusiast. I wouldn't say it's 17 minutes that flew by second to none, but all in all it's still a recommendable final result.
Tom Murray
The Crimson Permanent Assurance is, to me, one of the high points of Monty Python and His Flying Circus. It was created in conjunction with the film The Meaning of Life but was created by Terry Gilliam in a separate studio. He went way over budget without informing the others and when it was finished, they wondered what to do with it; it did not fit in with the rest of the movie. They decided to include it as if it were a separate short to be shown before the feature. The short was so well received at the Cannes Film Festival that The Meaning of Life was guaranteed to be a success.The short was originally intended to be a five-minute animated short but Gilliam felt that it would be more suited to live action. It became a 30 minute film and was then edited to 16 minutes. The film is a wonderful, highly imaginative, funny, anti-capitalist fantasy, with a very nice song.It begins by showing what appears to be a ship's sails, which turn out actually to be canvasses that are covering the face of a large old building that is being cleaned. The original impression, however, turns out to be the reality. The Crimson Permanent Assurance Company is a very British company that has been in existence for a long, long time. Its staff loyalty has left it with a geriatric staff, who have worked there all their lives. The company has been purchased by The Very Big Corporation of America, which brings in efficiency experts to rank the staff. When a staff member is fired for being slow, rebellion erupts. Evidently, this moment has been anticipated, because everybody seems to know exactly what to do: how to use office equipment as weapons, the chain of command, that the building is able to sail off on the "Wide Accountant-sea", etc. Since the charm of the movie is its element of surprise, I will say no more (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).One question remains: is The Crimson Permanent Assurance a separate short film or an integral part of the feature film The Meaning of Life? The answer is, "Yes!"For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crimson_Permanent_Assurance
MisterWhiplash
While the feature this short is presented after in succession, Monty Python's the Meaning of Life, is a very good comedy with the scattered laughs bringing some of their best moments, in sheer audacity and daring with the film-making the prize has to go to writer/director Terry Gilliam for his 'The Crimson Permanent Assurance' (in fact it did at Cannes in 83). The key to understanding it, or at least appreciating it, is knowing that it was originally meant to be shorter, much shorter, as one of the animated segways that connect the segments in the Monty Python sketches. This idea soon expanded for Gilliam, and his 'director bug' (right before his take-off to Brazil and right after his first two solo director outings) took over into this ideally cartoonish, surrealist, and perfectly anarchic comedy of will-power.Sum up the story quick, will do- the workers at the Crimson Permanent Assurance company are old, very old, and very tired and beat down, like the ship rowers in Ben Hur. It finally breaks for their to be a revolution against the bosses, and the old men fight back. On this simple premise, Gilliam builds and builds (with extra help from cinematographer Roger Pratt, and a couple of the other Pythons as extras) until one wonders how this can even conceivably be made as entertainment. I once remember hearing Gilliam on the commentary for Holy Grail saying (sarcastically) 'the stuff in this film is so unjustifiable, its insane', and the same can definitely be said about this short film. It's big (this took up a million of the 7 or 8 million budget of Meaning of Life), its violent, its surprising, and while it maybe lacks only the sort of focused, dry British genius that was in the other members of Python, it certainly doesn't lack the daring of pushing the envelope (in this case, the Assurance 'ship' gets pushed off the world itself). Even when I wasn't laughing hard I was struck by the style of the direction, the fun in these old-school British actors, and the swashbuckling music.
selfparody
My very favorite is a documentary I saw called THE SUNSHINE, about a flophouse in the Bowery which like require intense callousness to not get some reaction. SO, it's not really a fair fight when it comes to considering fiction.Terry Gilliam has made a flick about old-world business versus corporate seizures that will make one who has an appreciation for physical comedy, the absurd, or business satire enjoy wasting fifteen minutes. It has the best music I have ever heard outside of Clint Mansell (PI and Requiem for a Dream.) It has some magnificent models, and a song that is so immensely witty I forgave Eric Idle for being in BURN Hollywood BURN.
