I saw Being There for the first time last night. Well, I’ve seen bits and pieces of it before but I’ve never watched it all the way through. Well, I still have never watched it all the way through, as I missed the first 10-15 minutes or so, but anyway…what a great movie! I haven’t laughed so much at a movie in a long time. I wish there were more movies with it’s intelligence and subtlety.
A few observations:
It seemed to me that the movie may have been intended to be set in the near future, well, the near future of when it was made (the late seventies). The world leaders did not seem to be based on anyone around that time, and televisions with remote controls seemed notably more common than they were at that time, and it was implied that Chance had his remote control for a long time.
I really liked the strong implication that Benjamin Rand was part of the illuminati - at his funeral he is carried to a huge monument of the eye in the pyramid.
Sellers did a wonderful acting job, I loved catching the moments where his character’s usual calm demeanor changed subtly when he was happy, sad, or confused. The part where he has tears in his eyes is sadder than many scenes where someone is grieving because the fact he is visibly showing emotion is unusual for the character.
I also admired the relationship between Benjamin and Eve…so many movies portray the relationship between a rich older man and a younger woman negatively, I felt it was handled very well in this and both actors did a good job of portraying someone who is deeply in love. I got the feeling that P. T. Anderson was somewhat inspired by this relationship when he made Magnolia.
I also loved Shirley MacLaine and Peter Sellers’ “love scene”. My favorite line, though, had to be “What I tell you? This is a white man’s country!” by the former housekeeper. Either that or “I like to watch”.
Did you watch the credits? They include some hysterical outtakes of Peter Sellers cracking up while in character.
A book I read by Sellers’ (cry baby) son stated that his father drove everybody NUTS while making this film. He had a tendency to stay in character 24/7 while filming, and you can imagine what it’s like living with Chance.
Totally irrelevant trivia: BEING THERE was written by Jerzy Kosinski, most famous for the brilliant but horribly disturbing PAINTED BIRD. A decade before the movie version of BEING THERE was released, Kosinsky was scheduled to have dinner with his best friend’s pregnant wife in California, but the NYC airport lost his luggage and he decided to postpone his trip. It saved his life: the best friend was Roman Polanski, the wife of course was Sharon Tate, and that was the night of the murders.
Yet more pointless trivia, though it might explain the relationship between Ben and wife: Kosinsky’s first wife, Mary Hayward Weir, was one of the richest women in the country. Most people assumed he married her for her money, but all evidence is that he absolutely adored her. When she met Jerzy, she was the widow of Ernest T. Weir, a man almost fifty years her senior.
This is my wife’s second favorite movie (after My Life as a Dog) and I like it quite a bit also.
I have one gripe. And it’s a HUGE spoiler:
[spoiler]…I don’t like the fact that he walks on water at the end. I think the question of whether he’s simple or supernatural should have been left open to the viewer’s opinion.
Is that a valid gripe or am I missing something fundamental about the movie?[/spoiler]
The movie draws from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. It been way too long since I read it, but IIRC, one of the themes of that book was that the main character was JC set into Russia of the time. May be misremembering slightly. In part I take this scene as homage to an influential source.
IIRC, the camera angle allows for an intentionally vague interpretation - is he actually walking on water, or did he just manage to walk out on something we can’t q
Did he walk out on something we can’t see from our angle. The movie is thematically centered on the fact that all the people Chance encounters force their perceptions onto what he is, to make him what they percieve him to be, rather than what he is. The last shot does the same thing to the audience that has “seen” what Chance “really” is up to that point.
Was going to spoiler box this, but I obviously managed to post the first part accidently. Apologies.
Am I the only one struck by the brilliant irony of deathawk’s wording???
This movie is nothing but Chance encounters, isn’t it? One doubts the fabric of normal life when chaos theory rears it’s amazing head in Washington, D.C. I saw this film when it first came out, I was a kid.
After reading this thread, I feel it’s time to see it again. I’d forgotten ALL about the Polanski angle of Jerzy’s life. Sickening.
What deathawk said. I love that movie. My great lament about it is that Sellers lived to make one more movie after it, some execrable spy spoof. Being There would have made the perfect last movie.
Basketball Jones gets a bit grating in the flick, tho.
Re: your spoiler HelloKitty, that’s also what I thought I first time I saw this.
This is one of my favorite movies…and oddly prophetic of the election of 1980. After all, there were times during his presidency where the effortlessly media savvy Reagan seemed like a more-glamorous Hollywood version of Chance. (You may fire when ready Reaganites.)
Normally, I don’t get upset about who wins an Oscar and who doesn’t any given year. However, I do think it’s a damn shame Sellers didn’t win for his performance in this movie rather than Dustin Hoffman (of course the Academy was really paying back Hoffman for slighting him for his performances in The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy but that’s another matter).
It was an animated video of a Cheech and Chong song parody. (The original is called “Love Jones” and it’s arguably now less well-known than the parody.)
Actually Ebert’s point is not quite mine - in fact I would say he fell for it too.
The movie uses a certain narrative technique - 3rd person omniscienct - to set the audience up for the final shot. Use of this technique allows the audience to understand that all the people around Chance are forcing their perceptions onto the reality. Use of this technique also convinces the audience that they “know” what Chance is. The last shot grabs you by the neck and says “Okay viewer, if you know so much, what do you make of this?” Ebert has an interesting point when he says “The movie presents us with an image, and while you may discuss the meaning of the image it is not permitted to devise explanations for it.”
Where I disagree with Ebert is this: Thinking Chance is a Christ figure or gravity defying Road-Runner is as much an explanation as thinking there is a sandbar. How you read that last shot depends entirely on your perception of the world. Ebert excludes the sandbar explanation, not realizing that doing so is also an explanation. The first step in ordering your perceptions is to decide if Chance is really walking on water or not. Either answer says more about you than it does about Chance.
“Life is a state of mind” is proven by that last shot - we can only understand the world through our perception of it, we can never know the truth in and of itself.
'Course, being Kantian, I’m very sympathetic to that reading.
To me, “Being There” is the thinking person’s “Forrest Gump” (though the same could be said of “Zelig”). I wonder why it doesn’t enjoy much greater familiarity.
Thank you for the kind words. I love movies you can sink your philosophical teeth into even while you simply enjoy what’s up there. This was truly one of the best.
