150 Word Review: 'Being There' (1979)
Life is just a state of mind
Hal Ashby's quirky movies are compassionate, bluntly honest, and full of rebels and misfits. He was a Hollywood outsider, too, so it makes sense.
His prickly satire, Being There, stars comic actor Peter Sellers in one of his last roles. Sellers became famous for his mischievous smirks. He was a cerebral clown, sometimes hapless, sometimes sinister. But in Being There, Sellers plays Chance, a guileless middle-aged man raised in captivity. He's a child who has spent his life gardening and looking at the world through television screens, forced out of the house he grew up in.
Once on the streets, he stumbles into the lives of the rich and powerful. Shirley MacLaine is a robber baron's young wife charmed by Chance's blank stares. Being There is also a sour political comedy—the elite are buffoons. The moral hero is a holy fool, an awkward angel of sorts, innocent and serene.
I love this movie so much that I watch it at least once a year.
"I like to watch."