A simple gardener becomes a political powerhouse by saying absolutely nothing of substance.
In short: In the 1979 satire Being There, a sheltered man named Chance is mistaken for a brilliant pundit after his wealthy employer dies. With no life experience beyond gardening and television, his vague metaphors about plants are hailed as profound political wisdom, eventually positioning him as a potential presidential successor.
Directed by Hal Ashby and based on Jerzy Kosiński’s 1970 novel, the film follows Chance, a man who has never left his employer’s Washington, D.C. townhouse. After his guardian dies, Chance is thrust into the outside world. Through a series of misunderstandings, he is renamed Chauncey Gardiner by the wife of a dying mogul, Ben Rand. Because Chance wears expensive, outmoded 1930s clothing and speaks with a courtly, simple manner, the elite assume he is a sophisticated businessman fallen on hard times.
The film’s central irony lies in how others project their own needs onto Chance’s blank slate. When he speaks about the seasonal cycles of a garden, the President of the United States interprets it as visionary economic policy. Even as the Secret Service and foreign intelligence agencies fail to find any record of his existence, those around him—including the dying Ben Rand—find him deeply insightful. Chance remains entirely oblivious, his only true interest being the television programs he mimics to navigate social interactions.
The production itself was as enigmatic as its protagonist. Peter Sellers, who played Chance, reportedly stayed in character throughout the entire shoot, even believing he was having a genuine affair with co-star Shirley MacLaine. The film’s famous final scene, in which Chance walks across the surface of a lake, was not in the original script. Ashby added the sequence by submerging a platform, creating an image that critic Roger Ebert later argued should be accepted as literal rather than explained away. The film remains a celebrated satire, selected for the National Film Registry in 2015 for its cultural significance.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Being There
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