BEFORE: Nope, it's not Peter Sellers' birthday (good guess, though...). Sellers carries over from "Lolita" and provides a link to my next chain, films centered around a mistaken identity theme.
THE PLOT: Chance, a simple gardener, has never left the estate until his employer dies. His simple TV-informed utterances are mistaken for profundity.
AFTER: I accidentally kept the Kubrick connection alive, since this film features Deodato's disco-based cover of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (aka the theme to "2001: A Space Odyssey"). More Kubrick references tomorrow.
This is the story of a simple-minded man, a character in the same vein as "Rain Man" or Forrest Gump. He knows how to tend a garden, and that's about it - can't read, write, or feed himself. When he's tossed out into the world, he lucks into a situation very similar to the one he's used to - a Washington D.C. mansion with an old, dying patriarch and a staff that will attend to his needs.
The difference is that in the new mansion, the new patriarch is some kind of economic adviser to the President, so his simple thoughts on gardening are taken as folksy metaphors for a struggling U.S. economy - so before long the president himself is using his quotes to give a speech about how economic "spring" follows economic "winter". And apparently that's all the U.S. people need to hear to start buying again and give the economy the boost it needs.
Hmmm, a simple man who can barely tie his shoes, giving humble speeches with folksy metaphors, and failing upwards - it's the George W. Bush story! That might explain why he was always clearing brush at his ranch...
There's some clever interplay here, as Chance's words are constantly being taken out of context, and misunderstood - and for a mostly blank slate (not a true blank slate, that would be impossible on screen) he does have some simple charm. And there's also some interesting interplay between what's going on on the television and in the real world at any given moment, which takes some doing.
Some people seem to have taken a rather Biblical interpretation of the movie, since the character is cast out of a garden, has feelings for a woman named Eve, and speaks in metaphors, which Jesus was known to do. Then we've got the final scene... I don't know about all that, but it raises the question - what if Jesus came back to Earth, and mentally wasn't all there? That could be a whole other movie...
Also starring Shirley Maclaine (last seen in "Valentine's Day"), Jack Warden (last seen in "12 Angry Men"), Richard Dysart (last seen in "The Falcon and the Snowman"), David Clennon (last seen in "Falling in Love").
RATING: 6 out of 10 limousines
When you've made the sale...stop selling. Shut up. Watch your pigeon as he signs the papers, examine them to make sure they've been signed properly, and then put the papers in your pocket, shake hands, and walk away.
ReplyDelete"Being There" steps on a rake at the very end. Up until the point in which Chance walks on water, this is a movie firmly grounded in reality. How can a borderline mental invalid become both a populist hero and a rising star of conservative politics? Somehow, the movie manages to offer credible, believable, and _grounded_ explanations.
Fab. You've got yourself a movie, here!
Chance's walk on water ruins everything...and it's our last image of the story, so it's designed to sit there and linger. Worse: the film even goes out of its way to prove to the audience that yup, this is out explicit intention: he's actually walking on water. See? He's poking the water with his umbrella. Don't go and think that maybe the sunlight is making the shallow puddle he's walking through _look_ like a deep lake. No no no. He's walking on water. Deal with it.
(The "Smokey And The Bandit"-style montage of end-credit bloopers destroys whatever was left of the mood that the whole rest of the film so carefully constructed.)
What are we now meant to think? Immediately before this shot, we're going through a mental list of our belongings and reminding ourselves not to forget the umbrella we put on the floor. We liked the movie; we've seen a fairly powerful meditation on the power of perception and interpretation. By remaining fairly inert, Chance innocently became exactly what everyone he met was looking for...which explains his meteoric success.
But the new ending is new, contradictory data that comes at the wrong time. It's a curveball that robs us of all of the equity we've built up through all of the previous scenes.
It's like a new scene at the end of "Hamlet." 9-foot-tall aliens enter the throne room and survey the piles of bodies. "Collect the simulo-bots," the leader says to his assistant. "Reset the holochamber. We must understand this species before we reveal ourselves."
It's not an uninteresting development, but it's a bad time to lower the curtain and send the audience home.
I agree to the point that the ending MOSTLY ruins everything. It's an odd way to end a film, perhaps they couldn't think of any other way to end it?
ReplyDeleteThe bloopers perhaps spoil the mood worse. Anything that interferes with the audience's suspension of disbelief should be scrapped. Except for "Cannonball Run"/Hal Needham movies, because they're often the best part.
It's sad that Sellers probably died thinking/knowing that this blooper reel cost him a chance at a Best Actor Oscar.
I agree completely, and it makes me think of Magnolia at the end, with that unusual "hailstorm." I suppose there's a metaphor in there, I just don't see how it added anything to what I think was a magnificent movie.
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