Being There is one of those movies I’ve been meaning to watch practically since the moment I became obsessed with movies, but I’m glad I waited so long to get round to seeing it. Not long ago, I could easily have found it a little boring. But since I saw Harold and Maude, I’ve been trying to catch up on Hal Ashby’s other work (with that and this he’s certainly among my favourite directors), and I’ve been dying to see Peter Sellers in a more dramatic role ever since being sort of disappointed by the Pink Panther movies (I personally found him far funnier in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, in addition to their being better movies in general).

This movie was a clear inspiration for Forrest Gump, a very similar story about a simple man mistaken for some kind of genius. It’s far more understated than the 1994 Oscar winner, though. There’s probably deep and wordy reviews reading meaning into Being There much like the people in the movie read meaning into Chance’s musings on gardening – particularly its beautiful “walking on water” ending. Much more appropriate to me is to be more like Chance himself, and simply say, I really liked watching it.

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