Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
I don’t have the desire to go back and count them, but I’m sure there’s quite a healthy amount of AMADs that start out with me talking about how I’ve intended to see the movie under discussion that day for a long, long time and it took this column to force me to finally just sit my fat ass down and watch it.
And that’s definitely the case with BEING THERE. I was a little late to the Hal Ashby party, only seeing HAROLD AND MAUDE maybe 4 or 5 years ago. Sure, I saw both SHAMPOO and COMING HOME in my childhood (weird that it’s those two, isn’t it?), but even those I don’t remember much of. HAROLD AND MAUDE I’ve seen probably half a dozen times since that first viewing. It’s an immensely rewatchable movie and I even got to see it this year at the Alamo with noneother than Bud Cort in attendance. He lead the audience in the pledge of allegiance and, to cap off the night, a full 200 part harmony of If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out.
I knew I’d love BEING THERE, it was just a matter of sitting down to watch the damned thing.
And I did love it. It’s actually a different movie than I was expecting, but I love it all the more for dashing my expectations. I was expecting a quirkier film, more in the HAROLD AND MAUDE mold, and what I got was a straightforward tale of a fascinating innocence… well, straight-forward until the last 30 seconds when something in your mind should pop when you see what happens.
Or maybe I’m just slow. I certainly see the hints throughout the movie, but I never considered that… well, you know… If you’ve seen it you know what I’m talking about, if you haven’t I’ll be goddamned if I’ll be the one to spoil it for you.
You could very easily see BEING THERE as a precursor to FORREST GUMP, but without the gimmick. The film opens with Peter Sellers looking very old, but somehow even younger than his hey day. It’s the innocence that he wears. There is no winking at the camera or showing off. He’s subdued, natural here.
What’s really odd is Sellers’ Chance watches the same shit I used to watch. I was born in 1981, but the children’s programming he watches in the late ‘70s is the same stuff I grew up with. That era Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, etc. So, immediately there was a nostalgic factor for me.
Turns out Chance since childhood has lived with an old man. He’s never had any formal educating, he can’t read or write, but he tends to the garden and is obsessed with TV. Chance was raised mostly by the maid, who comes down to tell him that the old man has passed away. Chance’s reaction isn’t sad or happy, but neutral. He takes it as point of fact and doesn’t have any strong emotions one way or the other.
The maid leaves and a skeazy lawyer type shows up to evaluate the property, finds this gardener, dressed up in nice, but old clothes. Chance inherits his entire wardrobe from the old man’s even older suits, so he always looks good.
The skeazy lawyer kicks the poor devil out and the fish out of water story really swings into high gear. Chance has never left the house, never been in a car, doesn’t know anybody and bases all his interactions on either what he knows from television or his personal relationships with the maid and the old man.
He also walks around with his remote control. That’s his reality. When he loses interest in people or places he changes the channel, but in the real world for some reason he’s finding his remote doesn’t work quite right.
Ashby keeps this stuff to a minimum, though. The meat of the movie is what happens to him after this brief foray into the world. He is injured by a car and is taken in by Shirley MacLaine, the young trophy wife of a rich, powerful and dying old man (Melvyn Douglas).
The Forrest Gump comparisons come into play here and only in the most surface ways. The two films are radically different, but you do have a simple, innocent lead who is suddenly thrust into a position where he has the ear and respect of the most powerful men in the world.
Douglas’ Benjamin Rand takes to Chance right away. I’m not exactly sure what it is… the humility, the childlike wonder at his surroundings, his innocence… maybe all them combined. Whatever the reason, Old Man Rand trusts him and brings him into his confidence, which also ends up getting him next to the President of the United States (Jack Warden).
Chance only knows gardening, so when asked his opinion on an economic crisis, he translates that into what he knows, describing a season for all things and as long as the roots aren’t severed there will be a bloom in the Spring. This alters the course of the whole country and the President’s policy, shooting Chance (“the Gardener” he says, which people take as his last name so he becomes Chance Gardener) into stardom within the political world.
Everybody’s trying to dig up information on him and that’s essentially the last half of the movie. You have some of the people around Rand worried this man is trying to take him for his money in the waning days of his life as well as the Government trying to figure out who this guy is. The press want info, entertainment shows on TV want him to be a guest, he’s invited to all the parties, etc.
Ashby also balances that out with MacLaine falling in love with him, something that is even encouraged by her husband who just wants he to be happy and with a good man when he’s gone.
Sellers never breaks character… well, that’s not exactly true… we see him crack up in a credits sequence gag-reel, but that doesn’t count. That’s after the story is told. What I’m trying to get at is that Sellers turns in the performance of his life. I love his turns in DR. STRANGELOVE and LOLITA, but his work here is so subtle, so controlled and out of character for him (or at least the image of him) that I have to give it to this film.
He was nominated, but lost to Dustin Hoffman in KRAMER VS. KRAMER. With all due respect to Mr. Hoffman, an actor I really admire who turned in a great performance in that film, Sellers was robbed. The only other person nominated that year that could have gotten it was Roy Scheider for ALL THAT JAZZ. Melvyn Douglas did win for Supporting Actor (beating out Robert Duvall in APOCALYPSE NOW, how about that?), so BEING THERE wasn’t completely ignored.
MacLaine also turns in quite a performance. Just like Sellers’ work, it’s understated (until her masturbation scene, that is). It’s a haunted and sad performance, but one full of hope.
Chance advertently or inadvertently saves these two people from the hell of self-pity and depression by his very presence. Seeing his influence on MacLaine especially underlines the happiness his character can spread.
Final Thoughts: This is quite an awesome movie, one that really does live up to its reputation and it’s guaranteed to make you sad that Sellers isn’t still kicking around today, having given us another two decades of work. It’s a sweet movie, a touching movie, a funny movie. If you’ve been like me and somehow avoided it until now make it a priority. You won’t regret it.
Here are the next seven in the line up:
THE PARTY (1968)
CASINO ROYALE (1967)
THE STRANGER (1946)
BROTHER ORCHID (1940)
THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936)
MOONTIDE (1942)
NOTORIOUS (1946)
And another huge one, probably the biggest “What the fudge!?” title of the year. NOTORIOUS also marks the 200th film of the AMAD column.
On that note, I have to pause the column for this weekend. I tried really hard to get the next two days watched and reviewed. I got it half done, but my regular BNAT duties have prevented me from following through. On top of that, I’m leaving BNAT Sunday afternoon and going straight to the airport for over 18 hours of travel… I think I have a death wish, but that all adds up to me not being able to knock out the next installment until maybe Monday or Tuesday of next week.
Sorry to flake out, but I just couldn’t do it. I’m only human!
Keep an eye out Monday or Tuesday for the next Peter Sellers flick in the queue, his reteaming with Blake Edwards in THE PARTY!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
