Being There begins as a satirical comedy of errors before transforming into something altogether more poetic, in part due to an astonishing lead performance from Peter Sellers. Middle-aged gardener Chance (Sellers) lives a peaceful life, tending plants in a secluded garden and watching television, until the death of his benefactor forces this naive man out into the strange world of 1970s New York City. A series of misunderstandings has Chance propelled upwards through the political elite and all the way to Washington D.C., where his silences are taken for profound wisdom and he becomes a blank slate for anyone to project their ideology onto- including a dying industrialist (Melvyn Douglas in an Oscar-winning role), his wife (Shirley MacLaine) and the President of the United States (Jack Warden).

The last great film from both Ashby and Sellers, Being There is one final exercise in the craft from two masters, even as their personal lives and health were collapsing around them. Ably assisted by a cast of veteran character actors Sellers is in the finest form of his career, displaying humbled restraint and interiority in a role that could have been painfully broad and clumsy. Likewise, Ashby displays a remarkable sensitivity contrasted with the New Hollywood acerbic anger and arrested development of his characters in earlier hits like Shampoo: here the irony simmers below the surface, but there's also an undercurrent of hope and something approaching spirituality, brought together with final images of transcendent grace.