A distance of over forty years has only improved Jerky Kosinski’s off-beat fable about an abandoned simpleton who unwittingly bears a gift for reflecting back just what a series of interlocutors are looking for. When it first came out, the Emperor’s New Clothes aspect of the story felt more like political pandering, but with real life events having all but overtaken anything in Robert C. Jones’ script, and with Hal Ashby’s non-pushy approach to directing more distinctive than ever, the film now slants toward humanistic parable. Peter Sellers, in his penultimate role, is a miraculous slow-walking/slow-talking paradox of one-note variety as Chance the Gardener, taken off the street by chance (what else?) then making a hit as a Delphic sage of finance in the midst of Washington D.C. social & political society: helping a powerful old man accept death; opening sexual pathways to his imminent widow; giving the President of the United States less an economic strategy than an economic philosophy; etc. All of this played out in hushed tones that would have stymied just about any other group of above & below the line creatives. The film is impossible to imagine without Peter Sellers, giving a masterclass in heightened restraint, supported by an all but pitch perfect cast. Especially Richard Dysart as the aging Melvin Douglas’s personal physician, the one man who sees thru the mirage, but reserves the right on whether to point out the missing oasis. Scripter Jones also deserves special nods for knowing when (and how) to use narrative ellipses to jump past impossible situations without having it feel like a cheat. And if a few moments still have that point-making stink to them, and the ending not something anyone seemed happy about*, the film casts such an unusual spell, you’ll hardly notice, or rather, hardly be bothered.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Everyone streams everything these days, but the Criterion DVD comes with an excellent Making of . . . EXTRA that backgrounds that all too concrete ending and much more.
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