Being There - Peter Sellers

directed by Hal Ashby
USA 1979

Sellers plays a mentally retarded gardener who has lived and worked all of his life inside the walls of an elegant Washington town house. The house and its garden are in a decaying inner city neighborhood, but what goes on outside is of no concern to Sellers: He tends his garden, he watches television, he is fed on schedule by the domestic staff; he is content.

Then one day the master of the house dies. The household is disbanded. Sellers, impeccably dressed in his employer's privately tailored wardrobe, wanders out into the city. He takes along the one possession he'll probably need: His remote-control TV channel switcher. He uses it almost immediately; surrounded by hostile street kids, he imperturbably tries to switch channels to make them go away. He hasn't figured out that, outside his garden, life isn't television.

He knows nothing about anything indeed, except gardening. But when he stumbles into Washington's political and social upper crust, his simple truisms from the garden ("Spring is a time for planting") are taken as audaciously simple metaphors. This guy's a Thoreau! In no time at all, he's the closest confidant of a dying billionaire industrialist (Melvyn Douglas) - and the industrialist is the closest confidant of the president...

Excerpt from Roger Ebert's review located HERE

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Theatrical Release: 19 December 1979

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DVD Review: Warner Home Video - Region 2 - PAL

Big thanks to Daniel Mott for the Review!

DVD Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	Warner Home Video Region 2 - PAL
	Region 1- NTSC edition:
Runtime	2:04:24 (4% PAL speedup)
Video	1.85:1 Original Aspect Ratio 16X9 enhanced Average Bitrate: 5.95 mb/s PAL 720x576 25.00 f/s
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate
Audio	English and French, Spanish DUB (Dolby Digital Mono 1.0)
Subtitles	English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Romanian, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Polish, Turkish, Hungarian, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Warner Home Video Aspect Ratio: Widescreen anamorphic - 1.85:1 Edition Details: • Theatrical Trailer • Cast & Crew (text screen) • Awards (text screen) DVD Release Date: 10 February 2003 Keep-Case Chapters 36

Comments

A well done if bare bones release by Warner. The transfer is good with some grain peeking through. There's occasional dust specks and small scratches. It looks quite dark sometimes but it's hard to tell if it's wrong not having seen the theatrical presentation. The mono sound is clear and free of distortions. Subtitles are white and look a bit blocky but they're well done and easy to read.

This is in my opinion one of Sellers finest roles and a definitive must-see Ashby '70s film. Some complements would be nice, maybe Warner will restore and re-release this in the future. Until then, this DVD is very commendable. A tip is to stop the film before the studio tacked on out-takes credits begin to roll.

- Daniel Mott

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[Screenshots resized to 800px wide from 1024px native resolution.]

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