Book To Film: Being There

Book To Film

Being There

Being There is both a fascinating book and a fascinating film in sometimes completely different ways, which is not an easy thing to accomplish. It manages to tell the same story but get across two different messages at the same time. This is especially impressive considering that the book and the screenplay are both written by the same person, Jerzy Kosinski. The film centers around Chance (very blatant symbolism here). He is a man whose entire life consists of watching television and tending to his garden. He lives in a house with a wealthy, dying old man and a maid. When the old man dies he is forced to move out and experience the world on his own. This doesn't last too long as he is soon injured and taken in by another wealthy, dying old man and his wife. Through a series of incredible misunderstandings he is soon on the path to presidency. In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting both novel and film versions of Kosinski's story.

  The Book

This is the easiest novel I’ve read for this series so far. I was actually somewhat amazed by how much I could read of it in short periods of time. It’s a very short and humorous book, but also one that is able to pack a lot of meaning in its limited length. It’s also a very remarkable book in its characterization of Chance, or the lack therefore of. Chance doesn't seem much of a character himself because that’s not his purpose. He is a “blank page” as the book says. The other characters see him and listen to him talk about his garden and project their own meanings and desires onto him. EE, the dying old mans wife, needs someone to fulfill her romantic needs and makes a lover of sorts out of him. The dying old man himself listens to Chance talk about his garden and assumes he’s metaphorically talking about business. The book says a lot about how people will make up their own reasoning out of nothing to make themselves feel more comfortable. Almost every character in the book gets some kind of meaning out of Chance’s behavior and words, despite them really meaning nothing more than a description of a garden.

The book is also about the dangers of television. Chance in the book isn’t a person. He has grown up with nothing to do but watch television and as a result he has no personality whatsoever. He doesn't have any recognizable human emotions, not even curiosity about anything. He hasn’t even been to certain parts of his own home just because he has the TV and the garden to occupy him. This is a metaphor for the state America is in. We are too engrossed in our electronics and TVs to care about much else, or at least it’s saying this is where we will end up if we arent careful, just like Chance. In fact, this entire book is like a metaphor in and of itself. It has a lot of themes functioning and many different levels. There’s the opinion that this is about where we can end up if we aren’t careful with things like television, and also the opinion that it’s about how people try and drag meaning out of things to satisfy themselves. It’s also about how we put people in power who have no idea what they are doing, and about how all something has to do is sound nice for people to latch on to it, much like the way politics work in the U.S.A among other places. There are still even more things you can take out of this book, almost like people take whatever meaning they want out of Chance. Who knows, maybe the book is really only about a guy working in a garden and watching TV.

  The Film

The film directed by Hal Ashby is a pretty faithful adaptation in the sense of what actually happens. There are a few minor changes in scenes and characters, but there’s also one pretty major one. Chance is depicted with a lot more character than he is in the book. There are scenes where he cries over the old man's death (the second one) and states that he actually loves EE. This completely contrasts with the emotionless characterless Chance from the book. The is especially odd considering that the writer of the book is also the writer of the screenplay for the film. This decision didn't sit with me well up until the very end, which will be discussed in the next paragraph.

The film seems to follow a lot of the same themes from the book, that is until the end (spoiler alert). Chance is Jesus. That may seem pretty insane and far too big a jump, but it’s done in the film in such a way that it works. In the last shot, Chance walks out onto the water like Christ himself to examine a fallen branch. This completely changes the meaning of the entire story. What does this mean for the country if Chance is elected president? Will he save America? Will he be crucified in a manner of speaking? These are all questions I was left with after the film, and ones we must come up with our own answers to.

  The Verdict

Being There is a book and a film that can be endlessly dissected and discussed. Its hard to choose which I like better because they are both so great and both so different. On sheer entertainment value I think I would go for the film version, but the book version is by no means to be missed.

- The Book: 10/10

- The Film: 10/10