The defence The Prestige Tourist
“Form is the argument.”
Every composed frame and deliberate cut is evidence that control can be thrilling in its own right.
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Being There
Comedy · Drama · 1979
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.
Movie details
Being There
“Getting there is half the fun; being there is all of it!”
1979 Comedy · Drama 2h 10m
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
7.9 / 10
81.3K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
95 %
Tomatometer
Metacritic
83 / 100
Metascore
TMDB
7.6 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over Being There?
For the defence
The Prestige Tourist
“You like your greatness pre-approved.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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Worth
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Richard Jewell
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Richard Jewell thinks quick, works fast, and saves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives after a domestic terrorist plants several pipe bombs and they explode during a concert, only to be falsely suspected of the crime by sloppy FBI work and sensational media coverage.
Where it lives
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Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Hal Ashby
Written by
Jerzy Kosiński
Peter Sellers
Chance
Shirley MacLaine
Eve Rand
Melvyn Douglas
Benjamin Rand
Jack Warden
President 'Bobby'
Richard Dysart
Dr. Robert Allenby
Richard Basehart
Vladimir Skrapinov
Ruth Attaway
Louise
Court is in session
Put Being There on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist
“Technique in search of a pulse.”
Immaculate construction is still construction. The film may be too busy proving its craft to feel alive.