Great Sixties Icon

Rating: 8/10 (17 April 2012)

I am not able to grasp all of the significance attributed to this film by those who have personal experience regarding the 1960s, but I am able to recognize it as a very well crafted movie. The acting is great, particularly Dustin Hoffman's perfect portrayal of a dry, almost stiff, innocent and Anne Bancroft as the original über-cougar. The music is also spot-on and enveloping. I never listened to much Simon & Garfunkel, but I am now inclined to start. The cinematography is excellent and varied with perfect examples of masking & a match cut plus underwater scenes.
While the story itself is not that unusual today, it has a different quality to others I have seen from that period in time. Even though it is obviously dramatized, it seems more "real" than previous movies. The situations are more frank than what would have been depicted in movies made only a few years prior and I can easily see why that, at the very least, resonates with the spirit of freedom exhibited in the 1960s.