My reflections about the movie "Being There"

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyJwbwWg8uc, then read my blog...

The Hal Ashby directed movie “Being There” (1979), based on the 1971 novella written by Jerzy Kosinski, looks at the difference between perception and reality. The plot is really about how Chance, by just listening, nodding and smiling, is being misunderstood by people who eventually makes him a candidate for the president election. His name, Chance, may even reflect the fact that chance means luck, and that Chance comes far by simply just “Being There” at the right time and place, just as the title suggests.

When Chance is evicted from his home, the music playing in the background is a jazzed up version of the opening of Richard Strauss’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” This music has lately been used in several productions to symbolize a new life, a new product, or that something big is happening in for example TV-commercials. The music piece was generally known as the theme music in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Nevertheless, the music piece is actually referring to the fictionized prophet, Zarathustra, descending from his mountain retreat to mankind. In the case of “Being There”, I believe the music piece reflects Chance entering the reality, his new life outside his home and his isolated garden. The music is originating from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietze’s philosophical novel “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” It deals, among other things, with “eternal recurrence of the same” (Wikipedia 2011). In “Being There”, Chance is met with “I see” and “I understand” very many times talking to other persons. This is a recurrence of words and eventually misunderstandings.

It seems like Hal Ashby was inspired by this novel as he used several cues from the bible in ironic ways just like Nietze, making Chance walk on the water, the garden and the gardener symbolizing paradise and God, “the room upstairs” symbolizing heaven etc.. In Nietze’s novel, a central irony of the text is that Nietze mimics the style of the Bible in order to present ideas, which fundamentally oppose Christian and Jewish morality and tradition. Zarathustra’s roundelay was sat as part of Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony in 1895-6 with the original title “What man tells me”. I find this is very ironic as this is really the essence of the movie. What is it that really is being said? And what are the pre-conceptions of the people surrounding Chance?

In the movie, I believe Chance is better off than most people he meets without having their pre-conceptions about ethics and morals. His lack of these societal denominators makes him do strange things simply because he does not know how to behave or respond. I think that this attribute eventually will be discovered, and that he will end up worse than the people around him. For instance, at the end of the movie Dr. Robert Allenby says to Chance, “you really are a gardener, aren’t you?” This may indicate that the doctor finally understands Chance direct and childish way of acting and loses some of the respect for him. He is no longer creating a finer and more developed perception of Chance than the reality.

Nevertheless, I think this is a nice story that tells us that one may come far with listening and smiling, but also that one should be aware of one’s pre-conceptions as they may not correspond with the reality.