"The Graduate," with top honors!

Rating: 10/10 (10 August 2010)

Incredibly enough, the only reason I even had the slightest clue about this movie was due to an episode of "The Simpsons" a few years back. Now that I've seen "The Graduate" in its entirety, I now see where that famous episode got its inspiration. Of course being that I'm only 24, that is perhaps the reason why I never quite caught on to the connection between this movie and that particular "Simpsons" episode, and plus I have an entire century of movies to pick up the references from!
On the serious side, though, "The Graduate" is one of the best movies I've ever seen, and certainly one of the best movies ever made. Directed by Mike Nichols (who won an Oscar for Best Director) and adapted from the novel of the same name by Charles Webb, 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock (a then-30-year-old Dustin Hoffman in real life, in his film debut) is constantly on the verge of panic within the film's first 20 minutes. He's just graduated from college (hence the film's title), and has no clue about what he wants to do with his life. His upper-crust parents mistakenly think that he'll probably go to graduate school, after some much-needed rest & relaxation, of course. Instead, Ben just spends his days floating about aimlessly decked out in full scuba gear at the bottom of his parents' swimming pool.
Ben does get some direction - or is it misdirection? - when Mrs. Robinson (the late Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father's business partner, tries to seduce him, and he eventually lets her, in private liaisons at an upscale downtown hotel. Ben's own youthful, post-college confusion and Mrs. Robinson's marital unhappiness is a match made in the hellish depths of suburban affluence. The affair continues on for a while with little problems, that is, until, Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross), the Robinson's college-bound daughter, comes home from Berkeley and Ben suddenly finds some direction in his life because for the first in his life since he came home from college, he now knows what he wants because suddenly he's in love! This of course, causes all sorts of problems because he can't date Elaine while still carrying on a sordid affair with her mother!
I've found yet another screen hero in Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of Benjamin Braddock. He's the character that defined a generation; not just for college kids circa-1967, but for college kids 43 years later in 2010! Any kid who goes to college for four years (in my case 5 1/2) and comes out without a single clue as to their future, will instantly find something to like about Ben. (I know sometimes that I feel that I'm Ben; I'm out of college three months and working full-time and still questioning whether or not I made the right decision in my college career.) Ben is confused, desperate, alienated, and clueless. The world as he knows it is big, bad, and scary (hence why he finds solace at the bottom of his parents' swimming pool). His parents expect that he's going to go and make something big of himself, but one of the film's themes regards the cross-generational shift in values, and so some (if not all) of the norms & values of his parents' age may not fit in within the norms & values of his generation.
And of course, Ben's generation's norms & values are perhaps quite radically different from mine. In my age- and sex-obsessed generation of 2010, you can bet that Ben's generation of baby boomers would have coronaries due to 2010 standards of right and wrong, what's cool and uncool. And it just seems to me, at least, that people in my generation only just seem to really want instant gratification without really having the will to work for it (which could be blamed on the older generations, each previous one working hard so that the next one has it a little bit easier - but my generation seems to me, to get bored pretty easily, lacks any real moral/ethical foundations, and overall just seems to be pretty lazy); but again, this could be blamed on previous generations.
At the end of the day, "The Graduate" is really all just about Ben, and his lack of direction. Only when he makes the mistake of falling for Elaine Robinson does his future become clear: it's to marry her, with little pondering of what goes on after that, as demonstrated by this film's hilarious albeit appropriately awkward ending at a church. Anne Bancroft creates a sexy and fearsome, but ultimately tragic and sympathetic Mrs. Robinson. She's not a monster who really forces herself upon Our Poor Hero (a "cougar" as today's modern slang terminology would call her), but she's someone who has a chance to make herself happy for once while stuck in a loveless marriage and it seems that she will do anything to keep Ben all to herself, much to his kicking & screaming (heart's dismay). We were all saddened by her passing in 2005, but if she is remembered for any of her many iconic screen roles, it should be the beautiful and seductive, not-so-ordinary suburban housewife Mrs. Robinson.
"The Graduate" is obviously dated by its '60s-era Simon & Garfunkel-performed soundtrack. And even if the dated soundtrack is a musical vocalization of Ben's (and to a greater extent, '60s-era college graduates) frustrations and anxieties, the movie itself still has great relevance today, and for that reason alone, "The Graduate" will never grow old, and will always receive top honors from movie-lovers everywhere, no matter what decade.
10/10