Title: Being There
Rating: 4 Stars
This is a continuation of my exploration of the films of director Hal Ashby. Semi-forgotten today, he was one of the more significant directors of the 1970s. Films that I’ve already watched include Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, and Shampoo. In addition, he directed the Vietnam veteran film Coming Home and the Woody Guthrie biopic Bound for Glory. All of these films were released in the 1970s. The breadth of them show that, in his prime, he was one of the great auteurs of cinema of that time.
Being There is right up there as well. It’s the story of Chance (played by Peter Sellers). Apparently raised from a child in the sequestered home of a reclusive old man, he has only been trained as a gardener. He can’t read or write. He can’t take care of himself. Besides tending his garden, his only other interest is watching television. He’s some combination of purely innocent and simple minded.
His world comes crashing down around him when the old man dies. He is forced to leave the confines of the only life that he has ever known. Wearing the old man’s out of date but impeccably tailored suits, he wanders aimlessly around the city, experiencing various misadventures, when a limousine accidentally hits him.
Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), wife of the very powerful but seriously ill Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas), jumps out of the car to lend him aid. One thing leads to another and Chance (now known to her as Chauncey Gardiner) becomes ensconced in their palatial home.
All of that is set up for the rest of the film. Chance comes into contact with a diverse set of powerful characters. To all of their questions, he answers with slightly befuddled responses or with simple facts about gardening (eg you need to suffer through the fall and winter to enjoy the bloom of spring and summer). Each person, instead of understanding that this is a simple minded man with no real experience, interprets his innocent, vacuous words with some deep meaning.
Ben Rand, representing business, tries to get him to induce him to run his investment business. The President of the United States seeks advice from him. The Soviet ambassador assumes that he speaks Russian and is completely taken with him. Major television shows has him on and breathlessly waits for / interprets his simple statements. With Ben dying and with his blessing, Eve falls in love with Chance and interprets his innocent remarks as expressions of passion. In all of these arenas, from business to politics to diplomacy to entertainment to love, his simple words are grossly misinterpreted.
By the end of the film, a powerful set of men (all white, of course), determined to select the next President and stay in power, decide that Chauncey is their best bet to win election. The film ends with Chance strolling down to a pond and then walking on the water.
With Watergate and the Vietnam War, the 1970s were a time when the American people, en masse, lost faith with those in power. Here we see all of these powerful people being fooled by someone that isn’t even trying to fool them. They are shown here to be clueless. Even with all of the evidence right in front of their faces, they are incapable of seeing the truth. They are all emperors and none of them have clothes. The physician, the one person that actually does figure out Chance’s truth, does not speak up because he does not want to upset a dying man.
The film ends with an unclear future. Will Chance become President? At what point will his simplicity be exposed?
The film ending with Chance walking on water also brings up interesting questions. Was the film implying that Chance, with his innocence and complete lack of guile, is some kind of Christ figure? If so, to what end?
Or is Chance walking on water an illusion (maybe there’s an old pier there)? Could it be that the fact that we, as the viewers, are fooled is the final trick Chance pulls? Does that imply that we are as susceptible to folly as those powerful figures that we were just laughing at?
Or is it something even deeper? During Ben’s eulogy, we hear “life is a state of mind”. Could it be that Chance, is his great simplicity, does not understand that he cannot walk on water? Since he does not know that he cannot, does that mean that he can?
I don’t know but these are interesting questions. One of the reasons why I enjoy older films, especially the ones from the 1970s, is that they aren’t unafraid to pose such questions.
Of all things, the film was marred by (and kept it from getting the full five stars) its end credits. For some reason, the end credits included flubbed outtakes from the film. Sure, the film is a comedy. It, however, was aspiring, through its comedy, to something greater. Showing Sellers, in his role as Chance, breaking character broke the spell that the film was casting.
dorkenstein 