Some comments on the second half

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 2003)

(This review concerns itself solely with a specific discussion of the latter half of the movie, so if you have not already seen it, you probably won't want to read this either.)
This is my second write-up for The Graduate  it's kind of hard for me to shut up about this movie; it's one of my all-time favorites, and I find more and more to like every time I watch it.
What I want to talk about specifically, though, is the second half of the movie  that is, everything past the point where Elaine Robinson finds out Benjamin and her mother have been having an affair. The film builds to a kind of climactic moment with that revelation, almost a mini-ending (complete with a long shot and a fade to black). Indeed, for many people, the film actually *does* end right about there: it has long been a foregone conclusion in critical circles that the film never completely finds its way back on track from this point on. That is, once the focus shifts from the relationship of Ben and Mrs. Robinson to that of Ben's pursuit of Elaine, The Graduate simply runs out of gas.
It's not my intention to argue too strenuously against this consensus: I don't believe there can be any doubt that the first half of the movie is much sharper, funnier, more intense, and just all-around more involving than the second half. (Though I do believe that by the first part being *so* strong, and involving us so well, it does tend to make the weaknesses of the second part less jarring than they should be: we already know and care about these characters  Benjamin, anyway  and want to follow them anywhere, no matter how sketchy and unfocused their stories begin to seem.)
No, the point I want to make here is that, though The Graduate becomes a different *kind* of film in the second half (a romance, versus the sex farce/comedy of manners that was the first half), it never ceases being jaundice-eyed and satirical about its characters. I say this because it is an easy enough assumption to make that the film makers expect us to take Benjamin's love for and quest of Elaine at face value: to believe that they were `meant for' each other, and that their ultimate triumph is a resolution to be sincerely wished for.
In reality, it is nothing of the sort. Ben and Elaine barely know each other  at least not in any meaningful way  when he begins his intense courtship of her (`stalking' might be the better term). There's something undeniably creepy and unsettling about Benjamin's fixation on Elaine: it's as if he's on a quest to woo and win her, but he's doing it primarily for the sake of being on a quest (and perhaps as a way of jump-starting himself out of the rut that his relationship with Mrs. Robinson has become). There's nothing specific about Elaine that is spelled out for the audience as to why she might appeal to Ben so much  save for the simple fact that she's NOT Mrs. Robinson. This lack has often been attributed to poor screenwriting and a flawed conception and, while that's an understandable conclusion to draw given the second half's other failings, I don't believe this is actually the case. Whatever you may think of it as a thematic strand, I believe this sense of blankness in the relationship between Ben and Elaine was deliberate on the part of the filmmakers - ie. they knew what they were doing, and what point they were trying to make.
And that point relates directly to the fallacy of romantic love. We see many scenes of Ben viewing Elaine longingly from afar (to the omnipresent strains of Simon and Garfunkel), the camera's soft-focus making it all seem like something out of a fable, or (more likely) a Harlequin romance. But, as an audience, we are so used to (just as much today as back in 1967) accepting these kinds of shots and poses as a shorthand for deep love, and a feeling that the two characters in question were `meant' to be together, that we are easily fooled into thinking that that is just what the film makers have in mind for these two. In reality, it's an insightful (visual) comment upon just how such `shorthand'  in not only film, but any of the arts (literature, song, painting, etc.)  screws up young people such as Ben and Elaine, giving them the illusion of love and passion being there when they aren't.
Which explains the film's ending  that is, its very last shot. It should be joyous and celebratory, as Ben has succeeded in his goal  snatching his beloved away from the altar and claiming her for himself (and she going along willingly, even giddily). But after the initial enthusiasm wears off, the smiles on the two of them dissipate and our final image of them is one of sheer dejection and confusion. And it must be so, because they have been duped by years of pop culture hogwash into believing that this is what true love is; the realization hits them hard that they don't have the slightest idea what they're doing together. And so Ben's dilemma of what to do with his `future' continues: he has wound up in exactly the same place he was at the beginning of the movie  only now with an equally confused human being as an appendage.
As I say, all this may not make you *like* the second part of the movie any better than you do (I can appreciate it, but on a different, somewhat lesser, level than the first part). But I think it's at least important to be clear what the film makers were after, and to judge it according to how well it hits *that* mark, rather than the one we may have been *fooled* into thinking they were going for.