Being There: Difference between revisions

[[File:BeingThereMoviePoster_4041.jpg|frame]]

 

 

 

Chance, the Gardener is a middle-aged, mentally-challenged man who has never been outside of the elegant townhouse he lives in, by orders of its owner "The Old Man". He has only two pastimes in life: gardening and watching television. Not long after the story opens the Old Man is discovered dead. In the aftermath Chance is told by the lawyers who have come to close the house - and who have no record of a gardener employed there, much less living there - that he must leave. Thus, he packs a suitcase of clothes (all hand-me-downs from the Old Man) and his remote control and heads out into the world. Soon enough, he is accidentally struck by a limousine and his leg is injured. The passenger, Eve Rand, happens to be the wife of an elderly, dying financial titan, Ben; since his mansion is now partially set up as a hospital, she invites Chance to recover there. On the ride over, she mishears his name as "Chauncey Gardiner". Though honest by nature, he doesn't realize she's making a mistake, and things snowball from there. Both Eve and Ben take a shine to this ruined businessman (well, that's what they think he is - he has such nice clothes, and is so polite), and the latter introduces him to the President of the United States. When asked him what he thinks of the current economic climate, Chance - confused and grasping at the word "growth" -- replies with the quote above. Both men are impressed, and soon Chauncey Gardiner has become one of the most powerful people in America, if not the world...

 

To this day, a politician criticized for being all style/sound bites and no substance or even intelligence is likely to be compared to Chance. Compare and contrast ''[[Forrest Gump]]''.

 

* [[Adam and or Eve]]

* [[Adaptation Expansion]] ''and'' [[Pragmatic Adaptation]]: The film fleshes out many of the characters and there's a significant addition in Dr. Robert Allenby, but also removes extraneous material by combining the two maids into one, dropping the Russians' attempts to figure out Chance's identity as it only duplicates the FBI/CIA search, etc.

* [[Also Sprach Zarathustra]]: With the Deodato version, that is.

* [[Big Fancy House]]: In the film, the Rand estate -- represented by the [[Real Life]] Biltmore Estate.

* [[Black Comedy]]: Death, socio-economic disparities between races (movie only), mental retardation, government spying, extramarital relationships...all treated seriously, and yet it's ''still'' funny.

* [[Covert Pervert]]: Subverted ''hard''. Chance's "I like to watch" is misinterpreted by ''everyone'' that he's a voyeur. In reality, he just likes to watch television.

* [[Crystal Ball Scheduling]]: With the exceptions of a clip of the President and Chance's talk show appearance, every clip seen on a TV in the film -- and there are many, including ones seen in the background -- is from a real show/commercial. And most of them were airing, new or as reruns, around the time of the film's making and release. They comment on or underscore the situation at hand or just Chance's personality; others become something Chance adapts to his own situation.

* [[A Date with Rosie Palms]]: Eve takes Chance's comment that "he likes to watch" entirely the wrong way.

* [[Equal Opportunity Evil]]: Averted with an all-black street gang.

* [[The Film of the Book]]

* [[Fish Out of Water]]: Chance. Luckily, he adapts quickly.

** Bad -- (Movie only) The lawyers who come to close the house are a male-female duo who are carrying on an affair behind the back of the man's wife (who is getting suspicious).

* [[Good Morning, Crono]]: The opening sequence of the movie follows Chance as he's awakened by the TV in his bedroom, and he proceeds to tend to his garden (there's a TV in the greenhouse), watch some more TV in his bedroom, and then go down to the dining room to wait for breakfast and watch ''more'' TV.

* [[Hilarious Outtakes]]: The end credits run over footage of Sellers constantly breaking down laughing during a monologue that was ultimately cut from the film. Sellers thought this was a violation of the movie's tone and tried to have them removed. The tone of the film (and especially the actor's death) makes the outtakes seem more melancholy than anything else. It doesn't help that Sellers is lying face-up on a table wearing a dark tailored suit to deliver the speech, thereby resembling a ''corpse'', as a film journal put it in a retrospective article not long after he died.

* [[Ice Cream Koan]]: Chance's "wise sayings".

* [[The Loins Sleep Tonight]]: The President suffers from this, a literal reflection of his corresponding political impotence.

* [[Lonely Rich Kid]]: Chance fits the trope quite well, save for his physical age and his unawareness of his situation. Eve and Ben have aspects of this, as applied to adults, as well: Eve admits she doesn't have many friends (and they're mostly older than she is), and the Rand estate is apparently only populated by servants and medical professionals. Ultimately, they need Chance and he needs them to fill in the empty spaces in their lives.

* [[Madwoman in the Attic]]: Chance.

* [[Man Child]]: As Louise the maid puts it to Chance in the film, "You're always gonna be a little boy, ain't ya?"

* [[May-December Romance]]: Eve and Ben.

* [[Meta Casting]]: Peter Sellers took this trope into his own hands when he decided he was meant to play Chance -- Sellers had often stated that he had no real personality beyond his characters; now he could play someone who has no real personality beyond other people's perceptions.

* [[Mistaken for Profound]]: Chance's "economic statements" are misinterpreted as deep metaphors.

* [[Mysterious Past]]: Played straight and parodied. The novel establishes that Chance doesn't know who his father is; he was told his mother died in childbirth. Parodied in that the CIA, FBI, and so on are trying to track down "Chauncey Gardiner's" background, but can't come up with anything because there is no birth certificate, etc. for Gardiner to be tracked with. [[Fridge Brilliance|Having been isolated so completely from the world, Chance likely doesn't have any of these things anyway!]]

* [[No Ending]]: Famously so. "[[Arc Words|Life is a state of mind]]".

* [[Parody Sue]]: Most of the other characters are affected by Chance's '''being there'''; it's just that the traits they cherish in him are ones they ''believe'' he has based on their own assumptions. Also, in the book, he's described by a character as resembling a cross between Ted Kennedy and Cary Grant.

* [[Peter Sellers]]: And how!

* [[Prophetic Name]]: Two.

** ''Chance'' was named such, according to the book, because "he was born by chance." The [[Meaningful Name]] becomes prophetic when his ''chance'' encounter with Eve and the series of subsequent misunderstandings bring him to power.

** ''Eve'' is the first person he spends time with at length outside of the townhouse -- and his garden.

* [[Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic]]: Sellers essentially used this trope in creating Chance's manner of speaking; it would ''have'' to be completely devoid of realistic diction/inflection because his language development would have been primarily based on how people on TV speak...

* [[Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]

* [[Small Secluded World]]: The Old Man's townhouse is this for Chance; television provides most of his knowledge of the world beyond it.

* [[Spock Speak]]: Chance's manner of speaking, especially his quiet inflection, invokes this trope.

* [[Steven Ulysses Perhero]]: Reversed in Chance's case!

** [[Achievements in Ignorance]]: One interpretation.

** [[Gainax Ending]]

** [[Magic Realism]]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]

[[Category:Films of the 1970s]]