Its triumph is one of tone, not content

Rating: Null/10 (26 February 2001)

I take up my pen tonight (metaphorically) to defend this movie from the onslaught of revisionist criticism it has taken over the past twenty years (particularly acute with its theatrical re-release three years ago). Any film that becomes as popular and as culturally defining as this one was in the late 1960s is bound to occasion any number of reassessments and reappraisals. However, the extent to which the majority of these have been so negative to the film is somewhat overwhelming. There's almost a defensiveness here - on the part of critics, anyway - as if to say, "You fooled us into thinking this piece was something IMPORTANT and PROFOUND - well it isn't! Now, we're gonna get ya for it. . ."
In fact, I'm not so sure that this film was ever intended as any kind of sweeping cultural or generational statement. I believe that may have been imposed upon it by the critics of the day, who wished to see in Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock the picture of disaffected youth, boldly rebelling against the false values of his elders. Personally, in my experience of the film (which I have seen now countless times), I don't find anything that grand. Indeed, to me The Graduate succeeds by being one of the best *minimalist* movies in American cinema. Its story is about a PARTICULAR character, in a PARTICULAR time and place, playing out a very idiosyncratic set of circumstances. It posits no doctrine, argues for no "alternative" lifestyle, and in general refuses to prostheletize or to make its hero into any kind of leader or paragon. If audiences responded (and continue to respond, critics be damned) to Benjamin's plight, it is because of the intensity of *feeling* that is communicated, not to the quality of thought. Indeed it could not be, since the main item up for display in the movie is the degree to which Benjamin's ability for clear thought has been subsumed by confusion, fear, self consciousness, and an almost soul-annihilating depression.
These oppressive qualities are communicated to the viewer through Mike Nichols' brilliantly meticulous camerawork. His dogged insistence, from the very first shot, of framing Benjamin in tight closeups even amidst (nay, especially amidst) a large group of people (the airport, his graduation party, the hotel) gives us an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. We feel acutely the young man's sense of entrapment and exposure; at the party, as he runs upstairs to his room, the camera rushes to keep up - and it is as if Benjamin is trying even to escape being in this movie. "Don't look at me!" his pinched voice and wilted expression seem to cry out, "leave me alone!" I ask you, is there a soul among us who cannot relate to that feeling, who has not felt it at least briefly during different moments of his life - being the outcast, the lost soul, the one in pain amidst the gaiety or unconcern of the rest of the crowd? The conditions which lead Ben to feel this way are not specifically enumerated (beyond a vague expression of being unsure about his "future"), but they don't need to be. The feelings are articulated so vividly - through camerawork and performance both - that they reach us on a visceral level, and we are free to fill in our own emotional backstory for them - thereby involving us more on an individual level than we would be if we were told more specific information about Ben.

Dustin Hoffman here is totally unforgettable. He takes what is essentially a cipher character, and fills him in with such pathos and vulnerability that we can't ignore him or look away. Even as we laugh at him, we ache for him. He would do it again twenty years later in Rain Man - that trick of being overwhelmingly present in every scene and yet remaining such a total blank. How is that done? What internal rhythm does he allow us to lock into so as to keep him a compelling figure, and one who garners our full sympathy, while being at the same time a total cipher. I don't know, but that magical performer's trick of Hoffman's is, along with Nichols' painstaking camera work, what keeps this film vivid and compelling all these many years later. Yes, even as the story sputters in the second half, and even as Benjamin's relationship with Elaine Robinson remains sketchy and maddeningly unexamined. It doesn't matter because by then Hoffman and Nichols have pulled you into their spell: you will follow Benjamin Braddock anywhere, accept anything he does at face value - you just don't want to take your eyes off him.
Oh, and here's to you, Mrs. Robinson. Her seduction scenes with Ben are some of the richest jewels in cinematic history. Their affair is, for both of them, a desperate and pathetic act, and their scenes together are charged with an almost overwhelming sadness and despair, which is strangely heightened (rather than alleviated) by the wicked humor these scenes also contain. It goes without saying that Anne Bancroft here is totally marvelous (just look at the way she says "Art" when Hoffman asks her what her major was in college to see how it's possible to pack a lifetime of rage and regret into just one word). But I am at pains to point out that, much as some have wanted to make her the piece's unsung and misunderstood hero, Mrs. Robinson is clearly and unmistakably the villain of the movie. She is cruel, manipulative, and (as the Simon and Garfunkel song about her would later suggest) quite possibly a borderline psycho case. She represents the death urge - the power of spite and vindictiveness to choke out all other human feeling, including the desire to see anyone else's life turn out better than one's one. It is unclear at the end whether Ben and Elaine will escape her fate - or her grasp - but it is certianly clear that a failure to do so would spell tragedy, not triumph.