With a flurry of hype preceding it's theatrical release, it was easy to approach Hal Ashby's 1979 film Being There with the sort of "show me" skepticism usually associated with Missouri. The film, adapted by Jerzy Kosinski from his own novel, had opened three months earlier in New York and Los Angeles to an almost unanimous chorus of praise. Critics hailed it as a comic masterpiece and proof that American filmmakers could produce something more substantial than disposable entertainment. Having felt burned by the critical stampede behind Kramer vs. Kramer, I expected another case of hype outrunning achievement.
Instead, Being There delivers exactly what its admirers promised. It is funny, intelligent, and quietly provocative, offering genuine laughs while leaving the audience with something to ponder. Even more surprising is Kosinski's screenplay, which transforms what was arguably his weakest novel into material perfectly suited to the screen.Chance, a sheltered gardener with intellectual disabilities, has spent his life tending a garden and absorbing the world through television. After the death of the wealthy old man who employed him, he wanders into Washington society wearing one of his benefactor's tailored suits. Mistaken for the sophisticated "Chauncey Gardiner," he is welcomed into the home of dying industrialist Benjamin Rand and his wife, Eve. Chance's simple gardening metaphors are repeatedly interpreted as profound economic and political wisdom. Before long, presidents, diplomats, journalists, and business leaders embrace him as an oracle, projecting intelligence onto a man who never claims to possess it.That premise worked better in theory than in Kosinski's novel. Once the central joke was established, the book settled into increasingly repetitive variations. Comic fiction was never Kosinski's strongest form. His real talent lay in bleak, fatalistic novels such as The Painted Bird, Steps, The Devil Tree, and Blind Date, where emotionally scarred characters drift through violence and alienation with unsettling detachment. The same emotional distance that gave those books their power left Being There oddly lifeless on the page.
The film solves that problem. Whether through Ashby's guidance or Kosinski's own reconsideration of the material, the screenplay strips away repetition and lets performance carry the comedy. The dialogue remains spare, but every pause and misunderstanding gains weight through the actors rather than exposition.Peter Sellers gives one of the finest performances of his career. Where the novel's Chance often seems like an abstract idea, Sellers makes him wholly believable—a gentle, guileless innocent whose complete lack of self-consciousness allows everyone else to reveal their own vanity. Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, and Jack Warden match Sellers beautifully, playing their characters with complete sincerity rather than broad caricature. Ashby wisely refuses to underline the joke. The comedy emerges naturally because everyone except Chance behaves as though the absurdity unfolding around them is perfectly ordinary.
That restraint gives Being There its satirical edge. The film is less interested in mocking Chance than in exposing the willingness of politicians, businessmen, journalists, and intellectuals to manufacture profundity from banality. Chance succeeds because powerful people need him to be profound. Their faith in him says far more about their insecurities than it does about his intelligence.
Underlying the comedy is Kosinski's familiar belief that history is shaped less by design than by accident. Chance's rise is a chain of random encounters transformed into destiny by other people's assumptions. In a culture eager for certainty, confidence matters more than comprehension, and appearances become indistinguishable from substance.Being There succeeds because it never sacrifices that idea for easy laughs. Ashby and Kosinski have fashioned a rare American satire that is simultaneously accessible, genuinely funny, and philosophically resonant. Sometimes the critics really do get it right.
