Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Being There
1979 · Hal Ashby · Being There on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice how flat and even the lighting stays throughout. (light)
Deschanel avoids expressionistic shadows or glamorizing light in every space, interior or exterior, so nothing on screen is visually flagged as important.
Payoff: The ordinary look of everything is the joke: nothing here announces itself as meaningful, yet everyone keeps finding meaning in it.
Watch the camera stay far from Chance's face. (camera)
Deschanel often frames him at a distance that lets you read the furniture and the room around him rather than his expression, which barely changes anyway.
Payoff: You end up searching the space around a blank face for meaning, exactly like the characters in the story do. In the reading: icon of quality. The reading calls this a qualisign: a still face holding one single quality, letting every viewer pour in a different meaning.
Notice how often a television sits in the frame with Chance. (staging)
Ashby and Deschanel keep placing him in front of screens throughout the film, so the television functions almost like a second character pulling at his attention.
Payoff: His whole understanding of how to act in the world visibly comes from one glowing box.
Listen for the sound world change the moment he steps outside. (sound)
Inside the house, ambient sound stays muffled and contained. The instant Chance reaches the street, real traffic and city noise arrive with a genuine jolt.
Payoff: The sound design does the work of telling you he has never actually been exposed to the world before.
Watch how little changes in Chance's expression at any moment. (performance)
Sellers maintains an exact, unwavering gait, posture, and eye focus scene after scene, never breaking into the reactions a normal character would show.
Payoff: The stillness is the performance. Everyone around him supplies the meaning his face refuses to provide.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Everyone around him is desperate to find depth in a blank surface. Watch what they project onto him instead of what he actually says.