Being There is a gentle, strange, and profoundly funny film, and Shirley MacLaine’s Eve Rand is its beating human heart. The story, adapted by Jerzy Kosinski from his own novel, concerns Chance, played by Peter Sellers, a simple-minded gardener who has spent his entire life inside a wealthy Washington house, watching television and tending plants. When his employer dies, Chance is cast out into a world he does not understand. He speaks only in gardening metaphors, which powerful people, desperate for simple wisdom, mistake for profound political insight. He is taken in by Eve Rand, the wife of a dying billionaire, played by Melvyn Douglas, and soon he is advising the President of the United States. It is a satire, but Hal Ashby directs it with such tenderness that it never feels cruel, and MacLaine’s Eve is the reason why.
Eve is a wealthy, sophisticated woman, but MacLaine refuses to play her as a caricature of the rich. Eve is lonely. Her husband Benjamin is ill and distant, her grand social life is hollow, and she is hungry for genuine connection. When she meets Chance, after accidentally hitting him with her car, she is charmed by his calm, his politeness, and his apparent depth. She does not see a simpleton. She sees a man who listens, who is kind, and who seems to understand her in a way that no one else does. MacLaine plays Eve’s growing love for Chance with a mixture of hope and embarrassment that is deeply touching. She knows, on some level, that something is odd about him, but she chooses to believe in the version of him that makes her feel alive.
The film’s comedy depends on misunderstanding, and MacLaine is superb at playing both sides of it. In one famous scene, Eve tries to seduce Chance, who responds, innocently, by suggesting that she watch television, and then by turning on the set. The scene is funny, but MacLaine makes it sad as well. Eve is not a figure of fun. She is a woman offering herself to someone she loves, and being gently, unknowingly refused. She does not become angry or bitter. She becomes more tender, more protective, and more determined to keep Chance close. It is a performance of great generosity, and it keeps the satire from turning sour. We laugh at the world that mistakes Chance for a genius, but we never laugh at Eve for loving him.
Hal Ashby, one of the great directors of 1970s American cinema, directs Being There with a quiet, observant style. He lets scenes breathe, he lets Sellers’ stillness do its work, and he lets the Washington locations, the grand houses, the television studios, the funeral processions, speak for themselves. The film is a satire of politics, media, and wealth, but it is also a fable about innocence. Chance, who knows nothing, is treated as if he knows everything, because the powerful would rather hear simple gardening advice than face complex truths. MacLaine’s Eve is the one character who loves Chance for himself rather than for what he can do for her, and that distinction gives the film its moral centre.
Peter Sellers gives one of his greatest performances as Chance, all blank politeness and borrowed television phrases, and Melvyn Douglas won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the dying Benjamin Rand, a man who uses his last influence to launch Chance into public life. But it is MacLaine who provides the film’s emotional warmth. Without Eve, Being There might be a cold, clever joke. With her, it is a story about loneliness, kindness, and the human need to be seen. Her scenes with Sellers are beautifully played: she talks, he listens; she reaches out, he remains serenely himself; and yet, somehow, a real bond forms between them. It is not a conventional romance, and that is why it works.
The film’s ending is famous and ambiguous. Chance, having attended Benjamin’s funeral, walks across the water of a lake, an image that has been debated ever since. Is he a holy fool? Is he a miracle? Or is the film simply telling us that innocence, in a cynical world, looks like magic? Ashby leaves the question open, and MacLaine’s performance helps to keep it open. Eve, who has loved Chance without understanding him, represents the audience’s own position: we, too, project meaning onto a man who may have none, and we, too, are moved by him anyway. That is the film’s sly, sad joke, and its profound truth.
Being There was a critical success and earned several Academy Award nominations, and it has grown in reputation since 1979. In an age of political spin, media manipulation, and the search for simple answers to complex problems, its satire feels more relevant than ever. But its lasting power comes from its heart, and its heart is Eve Rand. MacLaine, who had played so many sharp, funny, outspoken women, here plays a woman who is soft without being weak, hopeful without being naive, and loving without demanding to be loved in return. It is a quieter kind of MacLaine performance, and one of her finest.
For anyone exploring MacLaine’s career, Eve Rand is an essential stop. She shows that MacLaine could be tender without losing her edge, and that she could hold her own opposite one of cinema’s great comic actors without ever trying to steal a scene. She simply is Eve, fully, warmly, and believably, and that is enough to make Being There not just a satire but a love story, of a very unusual and very human kind.
Eve’s wealth, in MacLaine’s hands, never becomes a punchline. She lives in a grand house, she gives grand parties, and she moves easily among the powerful, but MacLaine lets us see the emptiness behind the grandeur: the long evenings, the polite conversations, the husband who is slipping away. When Chance arrives, with his simple manners and his love of growing things, he offers Eve something her world cannot: attention without agenda. She responds to that attention with gratitude and with love, and MacLaine plays both so honestly that we understand Eve completely, even when the world around her is busy misunderstanding Chance.