Postgraduate angst and anomie abound

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2011)

There are some movies that you watch at exactly the right time in your life. For me, there's no better time to come to The Graduate than right now, having recently emerged myself from the womb of the university and facing the daunting prospect of entering the adult world, a shift which seems abrupt no matter how much adult hand-holding one gets. The film perfectly captures the kind of aimlessness that comes with two decades of institutional guidance running out on you and the plaid horror of adulthood. Ben (whose character Dustin Hoffman expertly constructs out of polite deferment and aw-shucks candour) is used and imposed upon by the adults around him, and is caught up further in their net no matter how hard he tries to rebel.
The whole thing is brilliantly shot, from the otherworldly underwater sequence to the last shot, lingering long enough to make us wonder about the inevitable consequences of youthful rebellion and pose the tragedy of the moment after the craziest moment of your life, the inescapable question of "what now?". Mike Nichols' camera can be coy and humorous at times, a rare treat, but almost always captures beauty. It's rare that you see a narratively-driven film like this with such distinctive direction, and it deserves praise for managing to capture the best of both worlds.
The Graduate isn't a perfect movie by any means -- the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack begins to grate after a while, and Ben's love for Elaine never feels really justified -- but it manages to capture perfectly a complex emotion that always awaits on the other side of ambition, something that few works of art I've seen have even touched on. Recommended, especially to recent graduates -- hell, they should include it in the envelope with the diploma.