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Being There

Turkish title: Merhaba Dünya

“A story of chance.”

1979 · 2 h 10 min
Directed by Hal Ashby
ComedyDrama

Cast

Peter Sellers Shirley MacLaine Melvyn Douglas

Credits

Written by: Jerzy Kosinski

Plot

Chance, a simple-minded gardener who has spent his life in a wealthy man's house and knows the world only from television, is forced out when his employer dies. By chance he meets the wife of a powerful financier and her dying husband, who is close to the president. His simple remarks about gardening are taken as profound wisdom. Hal Ashby's 1979 film, with Peter Sellers, is a gentle, deadpan satire of media and politics.

Sinekatalog’s take

Hal Ashby's satire has a simple gardener mistaken for a sage by Washington's elite. Peter Sellers's deadpan performance makes a gentle, sharp comedy about how we project wisdom onto blankness.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 7.9 / 10 (82,823 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.

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