Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1979

The Contenders:

Roy Scheider: All That Jazz
Al Pacino: …And Justice for All
Peter Sellers: Being There
Jack Lemmon: The China Syndrome
Dustin Hoffman: Kramer vs. Kramer (winner)

Zen and the Art of Garden Maintenance

Film: Being There
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

Being There is a film that I watched far too early in my life. I was just a kid when I saw it the first (and only) time prior to today. If memory serves, I watched it because my mother really liked it. I can’t remember if I saw it with her or on my own, only that I did see it and that I really didn’t get it completely. That being the case, I wasn’t a huge fan of the film. I couldn’t get why no one twigged to the reality of the main character. It all seemed so silly.

So now I’ve watched it again, and my opinion hasn’t changed a bit. I still can’t see why no one understands that the main character is a child in a man’s body, an intellectual tabula rasa. As an adult, I see that this is where the comedy comes from. I still, though, don’t get what’s so funny about the whole thing. I freely admit that my earlier experience with this film may well be coloring my interpretation of it now.