POP FILTER

VS.

THE CLASSICS OF 1979

BEING THERE

I too often assume nothing really that great happened before I was born. Sure there was Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and all of Hitchcock, but comedy was pretty broad and not that insightful. Even I Love Lucy, which is still transcendentally funny, is simply slapstick. It’s executed perfectly, but there’s no thought-provoking going on there. Watching Being There has made me rethink my assumptions, and replace them with now just assuming I’m an idiot who thinks he knows everything. Which I mean, I sort of knew, but getting it rubbed in my face by an old-ass movie is shocking. Per usual, fuck the plot. I don’t want to just tell you what happened, watch the fucking movie. Spoiler alert: It’s really good.

But what are they trying to say?

Being There was Peter Sellers’ last film (writing that makes me realize Dr. Strangelove also came out before my birth, and boy am I an asshole), and is less flashy and gimmicky than his previous work. He’s not playing various characters, and the single character (the lazy prick) he does play isn’t bombastic, or over the top in anyway. This isn’t the pompously ignorant Inspector Clouseau running around all zany-like, Sellers’ Chance the Gardner is a quiet, reserved, and insanely intricate performance. As Chance, he perfects the doing nothing is everything technique that people like Ryan Gosling are still struggling to slip into as naturally. That’s not a knock on the dreamboat USS Gosling, there’s just a level of finesse Sellers has in this film that’s close to untouchable.

I’m sorry baby, I didn’t mean it. 

Not all the actors in the movie are on the same page, there’s definitely some old-timey archness from the more antagonistic characters. I’m pretty sure at one point the young lawyer states, “I’ll get you Chance, if it’s the last thing I do muahahahaha.” Sure, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. That guy hates Chance for no reason, and his motivations make no real sense. This stands out in a film that’s successful in spinning several plates including the nature of politics, business, friendship, love, death and Television. (Out of all of the fake memoir titles I’ve come up with over the years, I think “Love, Death and Television” is most likely to actually happen. Now I just need pesky life events to happen to write about.) All of the issues Being There deals with are handled with the same basic mantra of Chance, who most of the characters don’t realize is actually a retarded gardener. Chance only wants to talk about gardening or TV, and answers questions about anything by talking about one of his two favorite things. In an exchange with a talk show host about the economy, he says, “In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.” This is the message of the movie. Everything comes in cycles, sometimes things are hard, or suck, but they’ll get better again. It’s surprisingly simplistic, but still powerful. Sellers sells it well enough throughout that it never really gets tiring to hear again, and people interpreting his tips remains a funny gag throughout.

This might be the first time a character raised by television is dealt with on screen, and it’s probably the earliest that concept (and reality) made sense. But Being There handles Chance’s worldviews more softly, and less pessimistically than the countless TV shows and movies that deal with similar situations since. It’s not necessarily sad that the TV raised him, his simple views end up being exactly what the characters around him, and the entire country needs. We here at yourpopfilter.com feel the same way, most of us are glad we learned life lessons from 90210, X-Men, and most of the TGIF lineup, rather than from our shitty parents who were just guessing on how to live anyway.  Chance isn’t an idiot because he learned about the world from TV; he’s an idiot (classic definition) AND better than those around him. So just treat everything like a garden, and watch TV when your friend’s girl is trying to get all up in your business.-MG