Being There
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Actor: Jack Warden, Melvyn Douglas, Peters Sellers, Richard A. Dysart, Shirley MacLaineBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Unknown
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, HiFi Sound, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 130 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-04-03
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Being There
DVD Review: Let's try a theory here...
Summary: 5 Stars
"Being There" plays against almost every type imaginable for American film comedy. Granted. Off-putting, even, for some. Check some of the reviews posted here for proof of that. No, these are not Keystone Kops visual gags; and neither is this a comedy in which the central character is the kind of dimwad one instantly grasps in totality as one would in any Bill & Ted, Ashton Kutcher, or Chris Farley farce. One might suggest that the only parallel to Sellers' demure performance is that of Tom Hanks in "Forrest Gump." But that's not correct. Where "Gump" is a cheezy, high-budget form of sappy audience manipulation, "Being There" is a gorgeous, pure form of allegory.
The corrolary in American film comedy is, precisely, Buster Keaton, the eternal but average-guy stoicist who responds to events and rarely initiates them.
Sellers was robbed of the Academy Award for "Being There" he rightly deserved because it was surmised that the title explained how he played the role - in other words, he merely phoned it in, being by then too impaired to perform physical comedy.
But part of physical comedy is the discipline of restraint. Someone has to play the straight man in comedies of manners, or the shortcomings of those around him won't come to light. Imagine the discipline of restraint involved in playing Chance the Gardener from an actor who had been known for his physical comedy, and secondly for his history as a love 'em and leave 'em ladies man.
The story is now known of how Sellers wrote to Jerzy Kozinski as soon as he heard he intended to bring his short story to the screen, how he signed that note "Chance," and how that cemented Sellers' participation in the film. This is far from a film in which a physical comedian phones in a sleeper part; to the contrary, this was perhaps the most subtle and sophisticated American film comedy since Paddy Chayefsky's landmark film "Network" of 1976. The closing visual gag, for example, is treated as an absolute throwaway - if you blink, you miss it.
The film has come to be shown with two endings: the one with video clips, and the one with hysterical Sellers outtakes. The outtakes show Sellers' passion while making the film, and reveal that in no way was he diminished of comedic faculties, and has become as important as the theatrical ending in its own way.
Now here's the theory: Is it possible that Sellers, best known in the United States for the farcical (and sometimes vastly overblown) comedies of Blake Edwards but better remembered overseas for his monumental work with The Goon Show and Stanley Kubrick, was perhaps ill used by Edwards in a bunch of comparatively simple-minded comedies which belied the full range of Sellers' potential? Did Edwards typecast Sellers which to some extent forced him into a string of dreadful "ethnic" role comedies like "The Bobo"?
To me, the logical line of Sellers' brilliance goes through The Goon Show to Kubrick to "Being There," bypassing Edwards' comedies almost entirely, even as noteworthy as some of those were. Try Sellers' three (it would have been four but for a broken leg) roles in "Dr. Strangelove" and his turn in "Lolita," including his drop-dead hysterical improvized "normal girl" rant. That rant stops traffic over forty years later, and Sellers never stops leaning against a railing the entire time. This then is a glimpse Sellers' gleeful deviousness as a comedian: setting all the other actors in the scene with him off balance. He could do this with a word, or just a look, just as ably as he could do it with a physical reaction. I think this is really lost on viewers who consider Sellers as a comedian only in broad strokes, and much of this comes from Sellers' work not only in Edwards' films but in a number of productions from the 1960s including "After The Fox," "I Love You Alice B. Toklas," "What's New Pussycat" and "The Wrong Box."
There's a disturbing parallel between Sellers' Chance the Gardener and the alleged Presidency of George W. Bush, and a national media falling all over itself to read brilliance into the quizzical mutterings of a simpleton. Will he be exposed or will the aura of prophet-like adoration continue to fall at his feet? Ultimately it doesn't matter - the die is self-casting. That's Kozinski's and Ashby's point, and why "Being There" has to be considered entirely on its own terms rather than as a comedy with the comedy missing. The comedy isn't missing at all, but if you miss it, it's because you failed to see your own role in it.
Description of Being There
PETER SELLERS TRIUMPHS IN HIS AWARD-WINNING ROLE AS ANILLITERATE GARDENER HILARIOUSLY CATAPULTED INTO THE FAST LANE OF POLITICAL POWER. SPECIAL FEATURES: TRAILER: CAST/DIRECTORFILM HIGHLIGHTS: SUBTITLES IN ENGLISH, FRENCH, SPANISH ANDPORTUGUESE.Bestsellers in DVD
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