BEING THERE: thought provoking brilliance

If Peter Sellers is remembered at all today, it is for the series of ‘Pink Panther’ films he made in the 1960s and 1970s as the comically inept Inspector Clouseau.
But even that is a fading memory, as a new generation of moviegoers grows up believing Steve Martin created the character in 2006’s abominable retread of ‘The Pink Panther.’
Much like Martin, Sellers also squandered his talent and tainted his reputation with a series of mediocre and painfully unfunny films but, similarly, he was also capable of brilliance.
BEING THERE is a stunning example of the British comedian’s talent when he chose the right material. He displays a depth and maturity he had rarely if ever shown before, and hints at what more he could have done had he lived.
Sellers spent almost a decade trying to persuade a studio to make the film. It finally went before the cameras in 1979, just a year before his untimely death from a heart attack.
The result is one of my top three all-time favourite films.
Sellers plays Chance, a fifty-something year old man-child who’s lived his whole life in the confines of a Washington DC townhouse, tending to the garden, and protected by a wealthy and kindly benefactor.
When he isn’t gardening he is watching television. As he’s never left the house his only knowledge of the outside world comes from what he has seen on tv.
When his benefactor dies, the lawyers throw Chance out onto the street, leaving him helpless in an unfriendly and unsupportive world that is totally beyond his limited powers of comprehension.
Fortunately a traffic accident brings him into contact with Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), the young wife of the elderly, sick, and incredibly wealthy industrialist and political powerbroker Benjamin Rand (played by veteran Hollywood leading man Melvyn Douglas).
Fearful of a lawsuit, she takes Chance back to the Rand mansion where Rand warms to the younger man, mistaking his simple-minded references to gardening for profound political observations.
Before long and completely without his doing, the people around him have transformed Chance the Gardener into Chauncey Gardiner, a mysterious and influential political advisor with the ear of the US President (Jack Warden), and the one man that everyone who’s anyone in DC wants to meet.
On one level BEING THERE is a critique of the cultural impact of television on the United States. Chance relates everything in the outside world to what he’s seen on tv, and one of the film’s most intriguing aspects is director Hal Ashby’s choice of real television clips from the era. Anyone who grew up in 1970s America will find much that they recognize, but its meaning in the context of the story is less clear.
Despite repeated viewing I’m still trying to fully understand the message of this film, and that’s what makes me keep on coming back to it. Each time I watch it I’m left with something new to think about.

BEING THERE is also a sharp and very black satire on the inability or refusal of America’s political elite to accept people at face value, preferring instead to project their own interpretation onto the actions and behaviour of others, to create meaning and significance which just doesn’t exist.
Chance remains totally oblivious to the misunderstandings of those around him. He is the same mild mannered, simple minded man at the story’s end as he is at the beginning. What has changed are the people around him. Those who protected him from the harsh realities of the world have been supplanted by ruthless political operators who see in him their best chance to attain their selfish objectives.
Sellers was deservedly Oscar nominated for his performance, while Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The whole film is beautifully cast and directed, and the Rand mansion (actually the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina) where much of the film is set is particularly atmospheric.
Satirical, funny, dramatic, subtle, and thought provoking, BEING THERE is a neglected masterpiece of 70s cinema. Do your bit to restore it to its rightful place in cinema history. Watch it.