Rather darker than the comedy/drama/romance billed here - but very much worth the ride

Rating: 8/10 (30 April 2015)

I was remarking to someone just last night that I'd watched Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider only twice and that I saw a completely different film on both occasions. The first time I saw in the Sixties before that decade revealed itself as silly and nasty, it was a fable of 'them' against 'us' and how an older generation would hold out against a younger, more open, more optimistic, more adventurous younger generation.
The second time, at least 30 years on, what struck me was how prescient Dennis Hopper had been about just how superficial and vacuous the so-called 'hippy generation' was for all it's idealism and bravura. In where in that first viewing Peter Fonda was the main character and seemed to be calling the shots, The second time around the main character was definitely they less obviously Dennis Hopper's cynical co-rider.
I mention Easy Rider in a review of Mike Nicholls's The Graduate because much the same occurred: I first saw it when it came out and like everyone else thought it a smart, fresh, witty and often very funny take on young love and how young, sincere live will out whatever. Tonight I saw a very different, in some ways far darker film, one about obsession and loneliness, how the cruel innocence of youth can cut to the quick the soul of someone who has lived a little and learned a little more.
I decided to watch the film again after hearing a radio play on the film's genesis, how producer Lawrence Turman persuaded Nicholls, a respected Broadway director who until then had never made a film, that the novel The Graduate by Charles Webb would make an excellent film. It didn't seem so to anyone else Turman and Nicholls tried to get interested. And even when respected Hollywood heavyweight Joe Levine added his support and the project slowly took off, there were objections to Nicholls's casting decision, particularly having Dustin Hoffman cast as what until then was accepted to be a blonde WASP Benjamin Braddock. But Nicholls held out, having a particular take on the character as being an outsider, just as he, basically a German Jewish immigrant, and Turman, another Jew, were outsiders in Hollywood.
So watch it I did and, as I say, a far darker film revealed itself, one which was not about innocent young love but obsession and loneliness. Take Ben Braddock's behaviour: one can accept his gaucheness in view of his seduction by Mrs Robinson and even his tactlessness to the older woman once the affair is underway can be excused, as indeed Mrs Robinson, a woman of the world, does excuse it. But his subsequent pursuit of Elaine, a girl he barely knows, which could all to easily be mistaken for stalking, is decidedly unhealthy. This is not 'true love' needing to find its way as we once thought, it is the obsession of a young man who knows little about the world, isn't particularly aware and quite probably suffers from a bad case of extreme solipsism.
The film's very final shot is telling: once he has grabbed his prize and he and Elaine have escaped the church wedding and are sitting on the bus off to start life together, it seems to dawn on both very quickly - and apparently from the looks on their faces to concern them - that all they were really interested in was striking a blow against their elders. And that once that had been done - well, what next? They both seem not to have a clue. They do not come across as two young people who have found a soulmate, rather as two young people suddenly overwhelmed by the course of events.
Then there is Mrs Robinson herself, a middle-aged woman (sexily portrayed by Anne Bancroft) caught in a loveless marriage who merely wants to protect her daughter, possibly the one thing she can still cherish in an otherwise empty life, from making the same mistake as herself - her marriage and thus her wealthy but hollow existence was founded on a quick f*ck in the back of her student boyfriend's Ford. Once pregnant she had to give up the art course she obviously enjoyed and it will seem little wonder that she eventually turned to the bottle.
Ben Braddock, of course, the solipsistic young graduate she begins an affair with his wholly oblivious to life outside his own being and doesn't even begin to suspect that his middle- aged lover might be very unhappy and that her pursuit of him has less to do with sex and more to do with a far more personal need.
My take on how much darker the film is than at first we thought, might make it sound rather heavy going, but actually the film is nothing of the kind and to many will seem to be the romantic comedy it was first billed to be. Nicholls has such a light touch and worked with such a witty script that what I seem to discern is merely what might - or might not - be discovered in its depths. Yet I don't think I am being fanciful. Mrs Robinson, possibly a figure of fun to some, is undoubtedly a very unhappy woman, and I for one am uncomfortable with laughing at someone else's unhappiness.
Nicholls theatre background is evident from the film's staging, but is none the worse for that. The film does little but mover from scene to scene, but is saved from any static staginess by some very imaginative camera angles and shots and Nicholls proved himself to have an interesting cinematic eye. If you are young and have never before seen The Graduate, I urge you to see it. If you have seen it before and are considering doing so again after many years, do so: it is a great film which well stands the test of time.