Gravity Defied

By Frank Rich

BEING THERE Directed by Hal Ashby Screenplay by Jerzy Kosinski

Being There is a spectacular balancing act. For almost two hours, Writer Jerzy Kosinski, Director Hal Ashby and Star Peter Sellers keep a single, scorchingly witty joke floating miraculously through midair. Though the joke ultimately crashes to earth too early--about 15 minutes before the movie ends--the final letdown does not spoil what has gone before. Here is a comedy that valiantly defies both gravity and the latest Hollywood fashion. There isn't a single laugh in Being There that owes anything to Animal House.

The film is an adaptation of Kosinski's 1971 novel. Its hero is Chance, a gardener, an illiterate and a 30-year shut-in whose entire knowledge of life comes from watching television. What might happen, Kosinski wonders, if such a man were suddenly forced to leave home and become a citizen of the real world? The answer to that question is Being There's single joke: no sooner does Chance venture out than he is mistaken for a philosopher, a sex symbol and a potential presidential candidate. The secret of his success is TV. Having been nurtured by the medium, Chance has all the attributes of a perfect TV star; he is bland, nonthreatening and always cheery. It is Kosinski's conceit that even a simpleton, if telegenic, has what it takes to be king in the land of the tube.

This point is brought home in a series of scenes built around the timeless farcical device of mistaken identity. For the gag to work repeatedly, the audience must believe that Chance is so completely blank that he could indeed seem to be all things to all the people he meets. Peter Sellers' meticulously controlled performance brings off this seemingly impossible task; as he proved in Lolita, he is a master at adapting the surreal characters of modern fiction to the naturalistic demands of movies. His Chance is sexless, affectless and guileless to a fault. His face shows no emotion except the beatific, innocent smile of a moron. His verbal repertoire consists only of mild pleasantries, polite chuckles and vague homilies about gardening. Sellers' gestures are so specific and consistent that Chance never becomes clownish or arch. He is convincing enough to make the film's fantastic premise credible; yet he manages to get every laugh.

The characters who mistake the hero's stupidity for wisdom are also finely drawn. Melvyn Douglas and Shirley MacLaine, as a dying right-wing industrialist and his wife, adopt Chance into their absurdly grandiose mansion and make repeated fools of themselves without ever losing their charm. Jack Warden is at his dryest as a befuddled U.S. President who mistakes Chance's non sequiturs for political profundities. Being There also features an almost Hogarthian selection of minor dupes. During the course of his odyssey, Chance manages to arouse the admiration or fear of Washington hostesses, a gay suitor, the Soviet ambassador, the FBI, the CIA and a book publisher who offers him a six-figure advance. Since Sellers' Chance, like the actor's Inspector Clouseau, is never aware of the chaos he unleashes, the hilarity increases exponentially. So does the ferocity of Kosinski's attack on television. Unlike Paddy Chayefsky's fatuous Network, Being There points up the true danger of the medium. Kosinski understands that TV does not make audiences "mad as hell" but instead reduces them to docile, passive children. If a benign dolt like Chance can unwittingly manipulate a nation of TV watchers, a telegenic villain could have a field day.

Director Ashby (Shampoo, Coming Home) so well understands Kosinski's aes thetic that he never has to spell out the movie's moral. This exquisitely timed film offers endlessly delicate variations on its single theme. Some scenes are classic. When Sellers tries to escape a real-life street gang by pushing a button on a remote-control channel selector, it is a brilliant exaggeration of the reflex every TV viewer uses to tune out reality. When the hero ignores MacLaine's bedroom advances to watch a kids' show, the impact of TV on American sexual appetites is reduced to its ultimate absurdity. MacLaine is worse off than a football widow -- she's a Mister Rogers widow. Like his star, Ashby never reaches to pull off his best mo ments. If anything, he is too refined. With a bit more plot and a few accelerations in pace, Being There would be as perfectly realized a satire as Dr. Strangelove. Even so, it is hard to complain about a film whose only flaw is an excess of artistic integrity.

--Frank Rich

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