Still touching after 35 years

Rating: 10/10 (6 March 2002)

This is one of my favorite love movies ever. Dustin Hoffman's first major role is - next to his 1968 "Midnight Cowboy" - still one of his best and most touching movies ever made. From the very first scene to the happy end it is showing the painful state of growing up, falling seriously in love with an older woman, experiencing sex and new feelings and leaving the conservative standards of living behind.
Hoffman is suffering in nearly every moment of the film from his longings, feelings and dreams, and Mike Nichol's direction, the photography, the fascinating song sound track of Simon and Garfunkel (including some of their best songs like Mrs. Robinson, The Sounds of Silence and Scarborough Fair) and the brilliant cast of Hoffman, Katherine Ross and the late Anne Bancroft add weight to Hoffman's private world.
The movie is also a good parody of the typical middle-class jet set lifestyle of the sixties (university degrees, good jobs, marriage, an own house and bland garden party conversations) and a soft variation of the typical 1967 topic of revolution and protest in the summer of love... this movie is as old as me, so I feel some kind of related to it. After having watched it many times during the last few decades it is still a brilliant and timeless movie about love, seduction, growing up, disorientation and alienation. Watch it!