Being There
1979
****½
Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Dysart, Richard Basehart, Jack Gilford, Lois Chiles, Mel Stewart, Geraldine Page
Chance is a simple-minded man who has worked his entire life as a gardener and learned everything he knows from television. When his employer dies, Chance is cast out into the world for the first time. Hal Ashby's excellent satire on media culture, image politics, and the cult of personality may be slow-paced, but it has lost none of its bite. This brilliantly written comedy-drama is based on Jerzy Kosiński's 1971 novel. Every scene with Chance seems to have two conversations happening at once, as the high society of Washington D.C. take him as a wise and refined man, who speaks in profound gardening metaphors. Peter Sellers is absolutely wonderful in the lead. Melvyn Douglas won an Academy Award for his supporting performance as a dying business mogul who comes to admire Chance.
