Being There
February 2009 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

It seems somewhat ironic that Fox would release this classic just now, for one of the issues it deals with is problems with the national economy. It’s really a major plot point in the story, yet I don’t remember it from my first viewing of the film in the late 1970s. Maybe things just weren’t so bad then.

More important, this movie provided the great comedian Peter Sellers with his next-to-last role (if we must count the horrible final installment in the otherwise brilliant Pink Panther series, a movie that was cobbled together after Sellers’ untimely death). Sellers plays Chance the Gardener, a retarded man who has lived his whole life in the confines of his employer’s house. He gardens, he eats, and he watches television. His benefactor dies, and Chance has to go out in the world for the first time. He quickly finds that though there are similarities, the world does not behave the way it does on TV. In one of the more amusing scenes, the gardener encounters a group of street thugs. He clicks his remote at them as if to change the channel, but naturally it doesn’t work.

Chance fulfills the adage of being in the right place at the right time. A car driven by Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine) hits and injures him mildly, and she insists on taking him back to her mansion to get him proper care. She turns out to be the wife of Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas), a wealthy industrialist and private ear to the President (Jack Warden). Eve has understood "Chance the Gardener" as "Chauncey Gardner." Chance answers most questions in the only terms he knows, those of gardening. When the President visits, Chauncey talks about the garden and keeping the roots alive, and everyone thinks he is making profound statements about the economy. He is mentioned on national television and is sought out for interviews.

Sellers plays Chance with disarming innocence and the complete lack of the physical and verbal humor that was used in his Pink Panther roles. The controlled, subdued performance is a marvelous achievement and garnered an Academy Award nomination. Sellers didn’t win, but Douglas did, in the Best Supporting Actor category. MacLaine is also subdued from her norm and turns in a sweet and genuine performance, creating a character we can really like. All of these performances are wonderful, with A-list actors at the top of their game, but the movie is entirely too long and eventually dies under the weight of its protracted one-joke nature. That’s just my opinion; many critics have been more positive.

The Blu-ray transfer is about as good as it might be. The photography is solid and perhaps a little unusual in that there are not many close-ups. The colors are warm and there’s a pleasant softness that gives every scene a sense of aura rather than a mere look. Blu-ray’s HD properties are welcome, for many scenes, such as the one of four people at a dining table that would seat 20 times that many, are shot with the foreground out of focus while the rear is focused. You can’t really pull that off with anything but a high-definition format. As for the sound, it is serviceable, and Warner has pursued its usual 1.0 stand with monaural material. It has, however, upgraded to high-definition sound, producing the first 1.0 Dolby TrueHD soundtrack I’ve encountered.

The release needed better extras than it has. As it is, there are two ho-hum deleted scenes and a short featurette with Douglas’s granddaughter providing memories of the shoot and her grandfather, a trailer, and a gag reel, which shows how quickly Sellers could slip from overt laughter back into his introspective character. The most important extra is an alternate ending that is really quite interesting if not successful.

I think Being There is best as a rental. One can admire the performances once through, but since the thing might get tedious on repeated viewing, it might be best to spend less on it. You be the judge.

• Go Back