Great Character: Chauncey Gardener (“Being There”)
In my view, satire is the single most difficult movie genre to pull off as the tone has to be just right. And my favorite comic actor Peter…
In my view, satire is the single most difficult movie genre to pull off as the tone has to be just right. And my favorite comic actor Peter Sellers was in two of the best: Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Being There. The latter, with a screenplay by Jerzy Kosinski from his novel, features a Protagonist named Chance, played by Sellers.
The IMDB plot summary:
Chance, a simple gardener, has never left the estate until his employer dies. His simple TV-informed utterances are mistaken for profundity.
Fish-Out-Of-Water. Stranger in a strange land. What we take for granted in our ‘normal’ world, Chance experiences as something entirely new. Being a gardener (hence people calling him Chauncey Gardener), he is prone to utterances such as these:
As long as the roots are not
severed, all is well and all will
be well in the garden.
That’s President as in the President. The wild ride Chauncey takes from servant tossed out on the street to Presidential adviser is a wondrous one, filled with brilliant comedic moments. Then, of course, there is the sex scene:
And ends with this enigmatic sequence:
Chauncey Gardener: A great character.
Any other fans of Being There? Why do you like the movie?
For more articles in the Great Character series, go here.