The Michigan Daily-Saturday, March 29, 1980-Page.5
PETER SEL1IER S IN 'BEING THERE'
Kosinski on film:
there, but not all there
By OWEN GLEIBERMAN
A few years ago, Paddy Chayevsky
ook some half-baked ideas about the
vils of American television and con-
octed a jumbled, heavy-handed farce
bout a news anchorman who goes
razy and becomes the TV-culture's
p messiah. Network had an ap-
lingly sardonic tone, and it took a
ew honest potshots at American fads.
the script was such a chaotic
ulish of McLuhanesque sociology
nd Mel Brooksian overstatement that
he basic satirical framework was
uried under an avalanche of cartoon
reachiness. The movie was like a
away snowball, spinning down a hill
nd gaining such size and speed with
very turn that one lost sight of the
easing, tantalizing "What if?" at its
enter.
Still, aside from Chayevsky's pedan-
ivel, there was something fun and
ocative about the notion of a movie
reated around a single absurd circum-
tance-a gimmick. You didn't have to
espond to the stilted satire to get a few
icks out of all the general looniness.
Being There goes Network one better,
ot only because its nutty premise is
eirder and cleverer, but because its
reators understand that less is more.
e movie's point-that Americans see
hat they want to see, instead of what's
e-has no more earthshattering
nsight than Network's, yet it's one of
he most ingeniously sustained gim-
icks ever put on the screen. The tone
s modest-too modest. Being There is a
hin, safe, sedate, ultimately one-
imensional wafer of a movie, the kind
f thing high school English teachers
dore because it's elegant and high-
oned yet as dryly digestable as a Ritz
racker-low-calorie food for thought.
et it has a pleasant, low-key charm
a load of wit. The movie's as tran-
ent as glass, but it's only on leaving
he theater that one may wonder why so
uch time and money was lavished on
his eccentric little project in the first
lace.
PETER SELLERS brings the film its
alm comic resonance as Chance, a
ysterious man of about fifty who
s-quite literally-a nothing. Chance
s never ridden in a car, never read a
k, never even stepped outside the
hington, D.C. residence he shares
th a nameless old man. Instead, he's
pent the days tending the house's tiny
'ackyard garden and watching his
right, big television, which he stares
t like some crazed video mystic, swit-
hing channels every few seconds,
umbling the words to himself, even
imicking the physical actions of the
ple he sees.
When the old man dies and the house
ssessed, Chance finds himself a
eless infant, with no one around to
undle him up and leave him at some
tranger's doorstep. Armed with his
uitcase and trusty electronic channel
elector, he enters this strange new
orld like an alien, and arrives at the
mmense, sprawling Gothic mansion of
Benjamin Rand (Melvyn Douglas), a
rominent Washington banker and
residential advisor in the last thrones
f a terminal illness. Rand is a stock
t-fisted conservative (in this case,
a heart of gold) but finds a friend
*n Chance, who listens to his non-stop
tream of right-wing babble with the
patience of a sage, interjecting oc-
casional asides about gardening which
Rand takes to be wise, weighty
philosophical pronouncements on the
state of the nation. Soon, Rand has the
Washington jet set convinced that
Chance is a savior. The whole town is
buzzing about him-foreign diplomats,
political elite, even the president
ck Warden), who's frustrated
because his top government agents
have combed their documents and can't
seem to find a clue to Chance's
background. From there, Chance rides
the talk-show circuit to national
glory-an empty prophet, a cretin, the
ultimate "created" sensation.
THE MOVIE unfolds at a langorous,
almost plodding pace, and several
Ithy scenes pass before the central
viewpoints with near-equanimity of in-
sight.
Here, he's another victim of the Julia
syndrome, devoting astonishing
amounts of craft and sensitivity to a
wan little anecdote that plainly doesn't
deserve it. Not that any of his efforts
are wasted. The movie expands what
was essentially a mechanical satirical
tract into a humanized story about a
warm, kooky bunch of characters with
too much fuzz in their brains to see
what's in front of them. Ashby includes
plenty of clips from old TV shows like
Get Smart and Mr. Rogers, and the
laughs they get are more than jolts of
recognition. Seeing those old clips is
like being reminded of especially em-
barrassing moments from our past.
The combination of the silly and the
outdated is almost beyond camp, and
we may wonder how we watched those
shows, but we did, and so, by im-
plication, have all the reckless idiots in
Being There who get sucked into
believing that Chance has a message
for them.
But Chance (or, as he mistakenly
comes to be called, Chauncey Gar-
diner) speaks only of what he knows,
and all he knows is gardening. Since
he's incapable of assembling the sim-
plest metaphor, everything he says is
ridiculously literal: when Chance tells
the President of the United States that,
"In a garden, growth has its season,"
he means it. But everyone takes his
weak-voiced offerings about spring and
summer and severed roots as profound,
poetic evocations of what's happening
within the country's economic cycles.
On a Johnny Carson-type talk show,
Chance's modest claim that spring will
follow winter is greeted as a plug for
hope and optimism, and Chance, the
cockeyed optimist, is a hit. It has
nothing to do with what he says, or what
he is; "being there" is everything.
IT'S NICE TO see Peter Sellers in a
classy role-the release of each new
Pink Panther installment was starting
to sound like a death knell for a washed-
up jokester. As Chance, Sellers
manages to look both distinguished and
vaguely silly, with his elegant greying
coiffure and slightly-too-small suit, and
he gives a hilarious deadpan perfor-
mance. Sellers' facial control is ex-
traordinary-for the movie's two-hour
duration, he's forever in this spacey
limbo between normal human repose
and an inanely blank, gaga-eyed stare.
In some ways the role appears
curiously undemanding, especially
during some botched outtakes that
Ashby inserted with the closing credits.
(Just why this footage is includedis
slightly mysterious; I hope Ashby
doesn't think he was playing any
illusion-and-reality games.) But Sellers
brings it every nuance of restraint and
pathos he can, and it's obvious that he
had a ball playing this zombie.
Chance, though, isn't just mindless;
he's personality-less, a well-dressed
blob, and the joke beings to run out of
steam midway through the movie.
Reviewers have taken Ashby to task for
his quasi-mystical ending, but by the
time the last scene rolled around I was
waitng for something, anything, to
break up the somewhat momotonous
flow of Kosinski's curt, message-ladden
scenario. The flaw was in not in-
troducing the mystical element earlier,
when it might have saved the movie's
limited vision from growing a coat of
See BEING, P.10
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TONIGHT
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PRESENTS
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THE GODFATHER, PART I1
If you saw Part I last night, don't miss the show tonight; The
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KINGS OF THE ROAD
(WIM WENDERS, 1976)
Bruno, the King of the Road, and Robert, "Kamikaze," travel the back roads
of Germany, Bruno repairing old cinema equipment, Robert on the run from
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humorous incidents, and interesting discoveries*all to the tunes of Ameri-
can Rock 'n Roll. The King and Kamikaze make two revelations: that the
Americans "have colonized our subconscious" and that everything must
change With Rudiger Volger and Hanns Zischer. Winner of the International
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ANGELL HALL 7 & 10:15 $1.50
Tomorrow: BREATHLESS (Godard)
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Indulging in his favorite occupation, Chauncy Gardiner (Peter Sellers)
placidly watches television in Being There, Hal Ashby's new 2dantin
of the Jerzy Kosinski's novel.
gimmick comes into focus. At first,
Being There even looks like an
Americanized Every Man For Himself
And God Against All, Werner Herzog's
visionary fable about a saintly man-
child in a heartless world. Chance's fir-
st steps in the Washington metropolis
take him on a mini-odyssey into the
heart of urban chaos. Fording off a
gang of thugs with his channel selector,
staring with wide-eyed fascination at
the city's neon glow, Chance greets his
new environment with tough, inadver-
tantly courageous defiance.
But Kaspar Hauser, the hero of
Every Man For Himself, was Herzog's
surrogate, a deformed visionary who
could see everything for what it is;
Sellers' character is simply a vehicle
for some benign social satire. Despite a
few half-hearted attempts at charac-
terization (notably a "romantic" sub-
plot that includes an autoerotic sequen-
ce with disturbing overtones-distur-
bing, because they're never explored),
Chance remains an unobtrusive non-
entity, as blank as a cleanly scrubbed
blackboard, wandering through an ab-
surd universe he has neither the desire
nor the ability to understand. Herzog's
film was slow and plodding, too, but
there was a dreamy Teutonic passion to
it, and it was clearly the work of an ob-
sessive sensibility. Watching Being
There, one gets the feeling that a lot of
things intrigue Hal Ashby, but that
nothing obsesses him. The movie's
hollow, cavernous atmosphere
(highlighted by Caleb Deschanel's lush
cinematography) recalls Warren Beat-
RESUMES
THESES - DISSERTATIONS
COVER LETTERS
REPORTS
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ty's musty Heaven Can Wait, but at
least that gimmick movie was padded
out with some high-gloss glamour and
larger-than-life romance. Being There
is a comic thesis film, detached and
blandly consistent.
THE NARROWNESS of the movie's
vision is traceable to its source-Jerzy
Kosinski's satirical novella, which
Kosinski himself adapted. It's difficult
to say exactly what drew Ashby to this
odd, cold fable. Perhaps it was the
mildness of the satire. Ashby's never
been a particularly derisive social
critic, and even his most politically
conscious films (Shampoo, Coming
Home) draw their strength from the
richness of feeling he imparts to
characters, and from his generous
ability to present a number of clashing
* 4
" VmK.
TRYOUTS
Ann Arbor Civic Theatre Presents an Original Play
LADMY IAMHERtby Diane Monach
Try-out times: 7:50-10:00 p.m. March 30, 31
April 1
Mass Meeting, Sunday March 30-7:00 p.m.
338 S. Main
ROLES: EIGHT MEN, FOUR WOMEN
A period comedy set in 1815 England
J10"
*
The Ann Arber Fi mCopernive Presents at MLB: $1.50
Saturday, March 29
CANADIAN ANIMATION FESTIVAL (McLaren et al.) 7:00-MLB 3
Since the 1930's with John Grierson ("father of the documentary") as the
director of the National Film Board of Canada has pfoduced some of the most
socially-aware and technically dazzling animated films ever made. Award-
winning shorts from a studio internationally known for its support of contro-
versial, innovative directors. "The farthest reaches of an art form."-FILM
NEWS.
CLAY ANIMATION 8:40-MLB3
More than any other art form of three dimensional animation, Clay offers a
wide range of possibilities. Included in this diverse collection are films by Art
Clockley, creator of the Gumby television series, a wacky play comedy entitled
KING TUT GOES TO McDONALDS (X-Rated), and THE LITTLE PRINCE, a film just
released by the Academy Award winning clay animator Will Vinton.
SUPERSHORTS: DEVO, ASPARAGUS, RAMONES0:20-MLS3
One of the most consistently hilarious, engrossing and entertaining programs
of short films ever assembled. Titles include Bruce Connor's MONGOLOID,
Susan Pitt's ASPARAGUS, Vincent Collin's FANTASY, PUNKING OUT (RAMONES)
and from the incredible Chuck Statler, we feature three new ELVIS COSTELLO
shorts, five DEVO films and the outrageous MADNESS in ONE STEP BEYOND.
This is what living is really all about.
i !e I A m n u AD NGDPEI (Rnner Vadim. 1959) 7:00-MLB 4