Review of Being There (2011) by Sara H — 15 Jan 2010

If you have ever heard or witnessed a telling of the classic joke "The Aristocrats". The key piece of the humor isn't the punchline. It is the weird, ackward, sometimes scattalogical and down right filthy things that are stated leading up to this very non-chalant ending line 'The Aristrocrats'. "Being There" is the very clean movie form of this joke.

All throughout this experience I know the punchline that Chance Gardener (played brilliantly by the wonderful Peter Sellers) really knows nothing other than what he's seen on television, yet how he slowly interacts with the other characters in this movie and the settings he passes through, and how they perceive him to have this deep profound meaning, yet I'm laughing my head off realizing that 'these rich people are idiots!' However within that realization shows that the ultimate joke is on us because there are so many subtle nuances of this behavior that reflects on how we are with the television and how we reflect on it to have some deep essential meaning at times when its just mindless escapist entertainment and in moments where there are deep meanings we easily gloss over it as if it never existed a scenes in which Chance walks through the impovershed neighborhood outside of the garden he tended is a perfect example of this.

The movies pacing is slow, very slow for a comedy but the speed fits this movie perfectly as it allows for these pieces both physically in the actors performances and visually in the settings in which Chance passes through to show that "Being There" is just that, being there in that moment and sometimes waiting to see how it develops.