The Graduate

Directed by Mike Nichols
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, and Katharine Ross
USA, 1967
Rated PG (sexual situations, some nudity, mature themes)

B+

CARTOONS
Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is in between the realms of the sheltered life and reality. He has just graduated from a prestigious Ivy League university and his parents are throwing a party for him downstairs and have invited all their wealthy friends. Most of the guests have known Benjamin since he was born and all of them are proud of his outstanding achievement at the school. Yet, he sits hiding in his room with his fishes, worried sick about his uncertain future.

He finally consents to go downstairs and greet those at the party. Everyone congratulates him and he smiles cordially. One of the guests takes him aside and tells him one word: "Plastics." The man promises Ben that it is a promising and flourishing industry and urges him to consider working for such a company. Ben escapes to his room upstairs.

Enter Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) and so begins perhaps the quintessential American sex farce, The Graduate. The movie is subtle hilarity and sarcastic confusion. Mrs. Robinson practically forces Ben to take her home because her husband has supposedly left with the car. She commands him to come with her inside because she is too afraid to come into a dark house alone. She forces alcohol upon him. She puts on some music and she asks, "What do you think of me?" It is obvious this is a seduction.

After much beating around the bush, she removes her clothes and bluntly tells Ben that if he is ever in need of some gratification, she will be more than happy to provide it. This is after she vows to Ben she is not flirting with him. Obviously Ben is frightened by this woman. He flees the house but, strangely enough, calls her at a hotel and asks for her company. He is reluctant to give away his morals and virginity to this sexy woman who is twice his age. She toys with him and he snaps and gives in to her temptation. They have an affair.

I am not a big Dustin Hoffman fan but his character, Ben, is painfully delightful. Trying to cope with his newfound adulthood, he has a fling with his father’s partner’s wife and then falls in love with her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). Anne Bancroft is sly, shrewd, sexy, scary, and fun and her Mrs. Robinson becomes the Dark Force of the film. She is the barrier between Ben and Elaine. There is a tad bit of vulnerability to her in earlier scenes in which she tells Ben of her failed marriage, her lack of interest in life, and her loneliness but the film turns on her and makes her a delectable villain.

By the end, I got the notion that this was a simple conventional love story made unconventional by all the sexual comedy. I think that is what The Graduate is. It is no masterpiece but it certainly is a heck of a film. The sardonic sexual coloring of the film seems to overshadow the bare love story, making the film definitely not about love but a combination of sexual satire and the corny desires for freedom.

Simon & Garfunkel’s score fills The Graduate with a gloominess and somber quality. "Sounds of Silence," "Scarborough Fair," and "Mrs. Robinson" are great songs and while, inside the movie they sound a bit like elevator music, they do add a sort of quiet in an otherwise pungent movie.

This was the motion picture breakthrough for Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross, and the amazing director Mike Nichols. The Graduate has a late-‘60s atmosphere aided but exceptional cinematography, appealing and creative editing, and a point-of-view style at the beginning of the movie. The Graduate is not a very practical movie, especially when dealing with the Ben-Elaine love story. Elaine seems to be unrealistically forgiving. The movie also forgives Ben for wrongly having an affair with Mrs. Robinson- as if Mrs. Robinson were the only contributor to their sin. But that seems to be beside the point by the end because The Graduate, after subsequent viewings, seems to be more of a cartoon than anything else… and its satirical take on its subject is both enjoyable and, at times, astounding.

By Andrew Chan

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