The Graduate

The two flaws out of the way. Once Ben goes on a date with Elaine, this movie goes into hyperdrive. There is no sense of the time elapsed, which makes their dating, falling in love, and Elaine accepting the other guy’s proposal all feel like they’re happening over the span of days. It is a stark contrast to the drawn out pace of the first 2/3’s of this movie. Also, Elaine kind of whips around from mood to mood on a whim. I know youthful indifference and confusion is a major theme of the movie, but in a single scene, she goes from accusing Ben of raping her mother, having a screaming meltdown, then wanting to stay with him, then not wanting him to leave town. That’s quite the emotional rubber banding, even for the young and impetuous. Okay, with that out of the way, this is an excellent movie. This is considered Dustin Hoffman’s breakout role for a reason: because he nails everything about Ben. He is a college graduate coming home and confused about his direction in life, and his parents (and other adults in his life) want to treat him like a human trophy. He doesn’t feel like he understands the world or vice versa. He is desperate to feel anything other than adrift and misunderstood. Hoffman brings all of that to life and makes him easily familiar. Everybody has had that feeling of “who am I and what am I doing”. On the other side of Ben — in every sense of the phrase — is Mrs. Robinson, played superbly by Anne Bancroft. Middle-aged and living a fake suburban life (her and her husband sleep in separate rooms), she feels forgotten and unwanted. She has no direction, but unlike Ben, she had it once and is trying to find it again. Seducing Ben is a way to feel alive again, to feel desirable and wanted and purposeful … and to feel as beautiful as her college-aged daughter. When she’s with Ben, she can be commanding and confident, as long as the relationship is only sexual; if Ben broaches any kind of discussion, her walls fall down and her vulnerability is exposed. It’s a masterful, nuanced performance by Bancroft, oozing confident sexuality one minute and shrinking into self-loathing the next. It’s really these two that anchor the movie, as nobody else gets quite as much to chew on — not even Katharine Ross as Elaine Robinson — but it’s okay. The legendary ending justifies that by showing Elaine is just as confused and impulsive as Ben. Just about everything else about this movie is excellently executed, from the direction to the script. The soundtrack can be repetitive — I swear Simon & Garfunkel only have four songs in this movie, but they’re used three or four times each — but they’re almost always used with precision accuracy. Especially “The Sound Of Silence”, which bookends the movie. Every accolade this movie has earned is for a reason; it is a fantastic film, and whatever minor flaws it has are easily dismissed, and for most people, probably won’t even be noticed.