by Sam Juliano
“It’s for sure a white man’s world in America. Look here: I raised that boy since he was the size of a piss-aint. And I’ll say right now, he never learned to read and write. No sir. Had no brains at all. Was stuffed with rice pudding between th’ ears. Shortchanged by the Lord, and dumb as a jackass. Look at him now! Yes sir, all you’ve gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want.”
It’s a one-joke movie sustained by a vulnerable premise. Yet Hal Ashby’s Being There against all odds employs amazing restraint and subtlety to pull off what could have been a tiresome exercise in satirical overkill. Aided by acting icon Peter Sellers playing against type as a mentally retarded gardener who is forced to leave the protection of a Washington town house, where he was employed by a wealthy patriarch referred to by the maid as “the old man,” Being There is pretty much unlike any film released before or since. Scripted by Jerzy Kosinski, the scathing satire takes aims at media obsession, how television shapes the public mind, and how frankness and the desire to please can lead to misrepresentation of staggering proportions. Sheltered since childhood, and exposed to endless hours of vapid staring at the boob tube, “Chance”, who speaks with a deadpan delivery is seen as a profound sage and philosopher by a media crazed society who read his simpleton pontifications with metaphorical glee. Kosinski continues to up the ante throughout the picture to the point where the final revelation, though utterly preposterous, shows the depth of the conceit in a world short-sighted by mechanized reactions that never leave the box of acceptability. (more…)
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