Being There (1979)

Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) watches TV and waits for the maid Louise to bring him his breakfast. Louise enters and tells him that the man of the house has died. Chance pauses, and comments on the weather. Louise, aghast, asks Chance if that is all he has to say. A moment later she embraces him, and, tenderly, says something to the effect of “Of course, it is.”

Chance, having no legal claim on the residence, is tossed out by a couple of lawyers and forced to find a new way in life. He is hit by a car, luckily the car of very wealthy, powerful man, Benjamin Rand (Melvyn Douglas). Benjamin’s wife, Eve (Shirley MacLaine) gives Chance a ride to their house to get fixed up and offers him a drink on the way. Eve asks Chance for his name as he chokes on his first sip of liquor, suddenly “Chance the Gardener” has become Chauncey Gardener, and it would seem that Chauncey Gardener is a wizard of financial practices, just the kind of wizard the President of the United States needs…even though Chance the Gardener would appear to be illiterate.

This scenario could be from a Frank Capra movie of the 1940s, or a John Landis movie of the 1980s. Instead Being There is, to everyone’s benefit, a Hal Ashby movie of the 1970s. The film is obviously a satire, of our self-absorption, of our insecure need to buy whatever’s being sold just so long as the salesman looks right, and of our rush to believe generic, comforting, meaningless promises. In short, Being There is the perfect film to revisit during the primaries, a time when our country speaks vanilla vagueries as a second language.

The most notable aspect of Being There is, as usual with Ashby, the tone. I’m not quite sure how to quantify what Ashby brings to any given film, but there is an elusive, tender electricity to his films that has been under-acknowledged. Let’s try to pin it down. This film works as bitter, sad satire, but is also very moving and strange without compromising the satire. Ashby, unlike many satirists in film, doesn’t sacrifice humanity for the sake of a theme, satire or not, humanity IS the theme, as it almost always is with an Ashby picture.

Many of Being There’s best scenes would probably be cut by another director. Watch the scene when Eve tries to seduce Chance. The naughty wife trying to screw the hapless hero is a staple of the Misunderstood Stupid Guy genre, but Ashby’s version is goofier and more vulnerable: heightened and real at the same time. Chance has no idea what Eve is offering him, and tells her that he likes to watch. He’s referring to watching television, but she takes him to mean something else entirely, leading to image of memorable loneliness and disconnect: Eve masturbates on the floor while Chance obliviously imitates an elaborate position on the program he’s watching.

Or watch how Ashby and screenwriter Jerzy Kosinski handle the Benjamin Rand character. Most films would play off of the character’s greed over and over again, but Rand, who is dying, is allowed a moment of grace and understanding. Rand’s doctor, who’s always been suspicious, figures out that Chauncey is merely a Chance, and approaches Rand on his death bed. Yes, Rand has elevated Chance because he tells the old man what he’s always wanted to hear (nothing) but we see in this scene that a certain longing also motivates him. Douglas, who is terrific, gets a line here that’s almost too much for this kind of film; he tells the doctor that knowing Chance has made him feel better about dying. What can the doctor possibly say to a confession like that?

None of these scenes soften the impact of Ashby and Kozinski’s rage though, which culminates in a devastating final image that ups the stakes considerably. Are all lives spent following meaningless, random, idiotic catch phrases? Are even the swiftest thinkers slaves to chic? Are even the super sacred things accident or happenstance? Is the film’s final line: “Life is a state of mind” meant as consolation or damnation? And what of Peter Sellers’ uncompromising work as Chance? I would be tempted to call the character poignant, the performance heartbreaking, but maybe that’s what I want to see just as a financial whatevermayhaveyou is what Rand needed to see. The idea of a total cipher is too unbearable and alien to imagine, and when we don’t understand something, well, then we decide to make it something we DO understand, like, oh I don’t know, how we may or may not use religion to rationalize something beyond our ability to rationalize.

Being There isn’t perfect. At 130 minutes, it’s thirty minutes too long, and Ashby’s pace is too deliberate, funereal. The film should be faster and more anarchic, like some of the earlier Ashby pictures, but the passion, the curiosity, the anger of Being There will stick with you. Just as the image of Chance watching his television as refuge from the surrounding confusion will stick with you.

★★★½

Posted on February 5th, 2008 in Reviews, Comedy, Drama, 1979 |

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