Rating: 
Summary: I had to stop the tape...
Review: I had to stop the tape 15 minutes into the film--I feel like I'm going to cry. It could be that I'm just missing Peter Sellers so much right now. This is my first viewing of Being There and I've never seen anything like it, and I've never seen him in a role like this. It is the subtlety that is so intense...if you are a person that doesn't get subltety in films, this is going to be very boring for you, otherwise get ready for a real treat. There's only a handful of his movies I still haven't seen left, so without even getting a quarter of the way through the film, it's like a wrapped gift with paper that I just want to peel back slowly, to savor it as much as possible. Already I know that this movie is beyond special, and if you truly love Peter Seller and his movies you will absolutely be blown away, too.
Rating:
Summary: Life, is a state of mind
Review: Peter Sellers is the middle aged gardner of a wealthy Washingtonian. When the old man dies the maid and gardner go their separate ways. Our hero packs a suitcase full of the old man's hand tailored finest threads and walks out into the world for the first time. Until now this simple minded man's only window on the world was TV. After a limo accidently bumps into him the occupant (Shirley Maclaine) insists on taking him to the huge estate she shares with her much older (and terminaly ill) husband - a captain of international finance who is close to the US President. The capitalist takes a liking to this soft spoken man and introduces him to the world's wealthy and powerful. People who meet the reticent gardner either think he is agreeing with them on opinions, speaking in metaphors, or simply assume things about him. There is a priceless scene of a reception at the Soviet Embassy by the end of which Sellers has been offered a six figure advance to write a book and is believed to have a degree in medicene as well as law. Something of an existential version of the future release, 'Wag the Dog'.
Rating:
Summary: I was there...
Review: 1979. What a great year. I graduated from high school. And I first watched two exceptional films ("Apocalypse Now" being the other), which permanently altered my taste for movies. Peter Sellers was brilliant in this movie. Nobody else could have pulled off this complicated role of being a complete simpleton. Who is the bigger moron: Chance or the others who assume his uninvited pretense? Okay, I have wanted to share my analysis of the ending of this film for years. Of course, we have the symbolic nature of walking on water. However, I argue that he walked on water because he didn't know that he couldn't do it. The "big house" is in the background, and a straight line is the shortest distance between any two points. Too simple?
Rating:
Summary: He's not the Pink Panther -- He's Better In This!
Review: Peter Sellers stars in this fabuously well written tale of a simpleton who rises through a strange set of circumstances to become advisor to a president. An excellent cast supports Sellers -- Shirley MacLaine and Jack Warden.One of the first movies to use outtakes as the trailer during the film credits. And they are hysterical!
Rating:
Summary: A 70s fable, with a zen spirit (really)
Review: There is nothing stylistically "zen" about this movie, however, the theme "just be there", is defintely zen. Chance, the gardiner, is grounded in his senses. He doesn't get into abstractions, he just deals with the people who are around him. He makes no attempt to adjust their "reality", he just affirms what they expose to him, and that's all they need to feel understood. He dresses like a gentleman and that's how people respond to him. This movie is a fable, because of it's fantastical ending, and also because it taps into the early 70's "Be here now!" consciousness. The moral is, accept and respond directly to the world around you, and you'll go far! I have found that imitating the paced way of dealing that Chance naturally possesses, gets wonderful results from people, and I get a chuckle out of it too. This is a movie that I can watch again and again and each time it leaves me feeling inspired. Wonderful!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Satirical Postmodern Fairy Tale
Review: Being There does not have three dramatic acts, no real drama, no real climax, so if you're looking for a traditional story structure, you won't find one here. Instead, what you'll find is an elaborate, satirical, postmodern fairy tale that operates under the following premise: The kind, naive, half-wit played by Peter Sellers is so completely out of contact with reality that all he can do is repeat what he's seen on TV. Yet his pronouncements, as vague and infantile as they are, produce sound-bites and are vapid enough to allow his admirers (just about everyone admires him!) to project whatever meaning they want to, so that he is considered some sort of genius, even a Christ figure. To further my point, I am reminded of the cartoon Mr. McGoo where the blind McGoo avoids accident after accident by sheer luck. Peter Sellers avoids verbal accident after verbal accident by the sheer luck of people misinterpreting everything he says so that he comes off as a genius. If that premise sounds funny to you for 130 minutes, you'll like this movie. I've seen Being There ten times over the last 22 years and I love it more than ever, considering it a postmodern companion to the novel White Noise.
Rating: 
Summary: Be There
Review: Some have interpreted this film differently and I
have heard someone say the plot of "Forest Gump' was
taken from this film. You might compare Chance with ET
having a childlike innocence that wins out over those
not innocent. Chance seems to have no knowlege of evil
and is honest, making no attempt to decieve anyone. Those
without these qualities wind up looking like fools or the
simpleton and not Chance. It is not a movie simply about how we
can misinterpret remarks. Chances remarks do make sense and
are intelligent if looked at deeper and his remarks and behavior
not only become inspiring, but are benifical to others. If it was
an "Emperors new clothes" story, Chance's remarks would have been revealed as nothing or leading to disaster and they are seen as the opposite. Let's say its the Emperors new clothes with many twist. Not only is the emperor not arrogant, but many in the crowd are naked and exposed as foolish. "Being There" is an intelligent and funny film--although they could have left off that "Basketball Jones" music video.
Rating:
Summary: Wicked and nasty...and as relevant now as ever
Review: I like to watch this film. In fact, if push came to shove, it just may be my favorite comedy. Some think it's pretentious, and maybe it is. Some think it moves too glacially, and maybe it does. It's flawed, it's repetitive, but it's still an audacious masterpiece in its own way. The premise behind the film is so singularly brilliant, and it remains one of the few modern satires, a genre that filmmakers (or maybe more accurately, studio moguls) have never been eager to embrace. But Being There came out during a particularly unusual period in American film, when unconventional projects like All That Jazz, Network, and Chinatown, were made, before the juvenilia took over Hollywood, and slow-motion explosions and martial arts performed in black patent leather and wire harnesses became the norm. This movie would never be made today. Yet, when I hear just as I write this that the person who was mobbed and applauded by corporate CEOs at the World Economic Forum was rocker Bono, who uttered profound things such as, "I really believe if we all gather forces on this and we don't create easy bad guys and good guys on this ... we can make progress on this," --well, could Chance have said it any better? I won't rehash the plot, and I won't even say Sellers was superb. He was fine, but other actors probably could have played Chance, as well as any of the other major roles except maybe Shirley MacLaine's. (Who else is offbeat enough, yet also *not* ditzy?) But the acting really isn't the point of Being There. It's the intellectual power of the idea behind the script (and book). It's really a re-telling and expansion on the idea of the emperor's new clothes. And despite the lessons of the film, we still see mindless sheepish behavior today in politics, in the media, in pop culture. We still see people judged by how they look, talk and walk. We still see a political system that doesn't know what to do, but always must look like it does. Being There holds a mirror up to society. It's a twisted mirror that, like the mirror in a fun house, distorts its subjects, but that's what satire is. The transfer to DVD, in a 1.85:1 format, is decent but not great. There are a few nicks and scratches, the color is a bit faded, the film shows its age. The audio hasn't been refurbished as far as I can tell in any way, and it's average late 70s sound, but since this isn't Star Wars it hardly matters. The disc also includes cast bios (only for a few of the players, though, and it mistakenly calls Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry a "thriller") and the theatrical trailer, which is actually quite well done in its own right. Peter Sellers said this film was his proudest achievement, and he even sent cryptic letters to Jerzy Kozinsky and Hal Ashby signed "Chance" with his phone number, telling them he wanted the part. Don't expect a barrel of laughs from Being There, but there are many wry chuckles. (By the way, you might want to read up on the life of Jerzy Kozinsky after seeing this film. Talk about life imitating art! He slipped us a semi-autobiograhpical film and no one at the time knew it.)
Rating:
Summary: I'd forgotten how good this is
Review: When I checked this out of the library a few weeks ago I remembered I had seen it in the theaters and enjoyed it. But I had forgotten how wonderful this movie is.
Peter Sellers' film career was checkered to say the least, with some cloying or downright weird movies and some brilliant ones. This is definitely the best of his ouevre, and one of the best movies of all time. Definitely in my top 10.
If you have read this far down the page, you know that Sellers plays Chance, a character so "simple" that he becomes something of a Rorschach test -- everyone reads into him what they want to see. As he falls in with the rich and powerful, you are sure every minute that he will be found out, but in their own way they are even more simple than he is.
My wife hadn't seen it before, and kept asking apprehensively, "Will they catch him?" I help myself in check and kept repeating, "Just wait, it gets better."
And I'll say that to you, too. The movie just keeps getting better and better and the ending, the last image you see, is so mind-bending and so hilarious it can't be explained. It has to be seen. I can't wait for my birthday, so I can ask for it as a gift!
Rating:
Summary: Black Comedy at it's Very Best.
Review: This film is truely a masterpiece. Sellers plays the lead, a simple man called Chance and it is a remarkable piece of acting. The humour of this film is so subtly black and finely balanced that only an actor of Sellers genius could have convincingly pulled it off. It is a film that centres around a chance encounter, a childlike innocence, misinterpretations, exceptance by association, and media frenzy. But is Chance only a simple fool, just plain lucky or a gifted genius?.
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