The Essentials-#72
The Graduate
There are very few movies at there that have tried
to investigate the American obsession with sex and our culture’s overall sexual
identity. Not only that, but very few movies have approach this subject in a
serious and significant way. There is a good reason why Mike Nichols’ “The
Graduate” was accepted for preservation in the United States National Film
Registry in 1996. The movie does a good job of painting a portrait of a boy who
is young and confused, a boy who is still piecing together his identity, a boy
who wasted four years at college and still has no idea what to do with his
life. When I graduated from college, my friends from home and my college buddies
had a firm grasp of what they wanted to do with their lives, and I feel like I
do too. Sure, everyone has set-backs, but overall we all have a plan of some
kind, a power-play that will cement our mark in life.
I never knew anybody like Benjamin Braddock (Dustin
Hoffman), a man who comes home from his college graduation with absolutely no
plan for his future. It doesn’t seem any family or friends seem to care, they
are just happy to have a college graduate in the house. It seems a little silly
that somebody who has a B.A. would still be aimlessly drifting through life,
but I don’t doubt it happens. In Macklemore’s recent album, there is a song
where he discusses the “confusion before the suit and tie,” and I think that is
a very real thing. I think some people do suffer from anxiety after graduating
college. We fear that we will never live up to our potential, we fear that we
will not become the people we studied to become and most of all we fear that we
will remain unemployed for an uncertain amount of time. These are all relevant fears
and I think Hoffman captures them very well within the first twenty minutes of
the film. I think Hoffman has always been a talented guy, and this is just
another iconic performance by an iconic actor.
On the night of his graduation party, Benjamin’s father’s
law partner’s wife Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) needs a ride home. Benjamin
agrees to drive her home and she swiftly invites him in for a drink and
proceeds to seduce him. Benjamin is reluctant at first, but eventually gives
into Mrs. Robinson’s seduction and they begin an affair. Bancroft was a very
beautiful woman and she knew how to use that beauty well in this movie. Mrs.
Robinson is a relentless temptress in this movie and Bancroft creates that
persona well.
Not only is there an intriguing story of a lucrative
affair, but a sub-plot emerges when Benjamin’s parents and Mrs. Robinson’s
husband declare that Benjamin should date the Robinson’s daughter Elaine (Katharine
Ross). Nobody knows about Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin’s affair and Mrs. Robinson
is very much against Benjamin dating Elaine. Benjamin takes Elaine on a date,
but purposefully acts like a jerk, but once he discovers he has a connection to
Elaine, he decides he wants to date her. What ensues is one of the zaniest love
triangles ever to appear in a motion picture. Yet, through the craziness of the
movie, the acting work by Hoffman, Bancroft, Ross and the rest of the cast keep
the audience invested in the characters. Not only does Hoffman do a good job of
playing the drifting young man well, he is really good at playing an anti-hero.
By the end of the movie, Benjamin is only after his own self-satisfaction, not
the satisfaction of anyone else. He wants to be happy and he doesn’t care who
he has to step on to get there. It is a bold move for a movie to create a lead
that we are not necessarily supposed to root for and I give the movie credit
for that decision. The character is further complimented by the good work done
by Bancroft and Ross.
What really makes “The Graduate” worth-while is how
sincere it treats its adult subjects. Sex is never an easy subject, whether it’s
TV or movies or any other piece of media. I liked how the film approached the
subject and took it seriously. I liked how Nichols successfully integrated the
subject into a film with a meaning and purpose. It is not a movie that just
discusses sex just to discuss it; the movie approaches the material in a
meaningful way.
There is a lot to marvel at when it comes to “The
Graduate,” and I don’t mean that with any pun whatsoever.