Being There (1979)

BEING THERE  (1979)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Hal Ashby
    Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvin Douglas,
    Jack Warden, Richard Basehart, Richard Dysart
Peter Sellers plays a perfect cipher, an impeccably dressed blank slate who has lived into middle age without ever leaving the house in which he's always resided, except to go out and work in the garden. When he's forced out into the world, he's embraced as a savant, though he knows nothing other than horticulture and what he's watched on television. His name is Chance, and because he has no recorded past and no real identity, he can be whatever others see in him, or whatever they need him to be. It's an ideal role for Sellers, an actor who hardly seemed to exist beyond the characters he played on the screen. Keep an eye on the final image, and see what you think it says about who or what Chance might really be.