Going the distance

Rating: 10/10 (22 December 2018)

A great film of its time, and I think, still great. The music and photography seem better each time, and I think this film influenced future music videos, not to mention other classics of the seventies (Harold and Maude) and later (the films of Wes Anderson). While it is a satire of sixties superficiality and hypocrisies, I see this now as a dissection of how young people are doomed to follow in the older generation's footsteps even as they try to escape this fate. Benjamin determinedly overcomes every obstacle that stands in the way between him and his biggest mistake: getting married to Elaine. Perhaps it is a flaw in the film that in showing him go the distance to the point of stealing Elaine from her arranged wedding, nearly everyone else in the film starts to look like a cartoon character of shallowness and spite. It is a shame that the Anne Bancroft suffers from this in the second half a bit. But I like to think that by this stage we see everything through Benjamin's skewed vision: he is caught up in his own quest for some kind of personal salvation and self-justification through marriage, and will end up, probably, just as lost as Mr. Robinson, Elaine just as frustrated and lonely as her mother. The strange, strained silence after the laughter at the end, shows that he and Elaine will rue this day. This irony at the center of the 'happy' end, makes this a great film: it shows up the romantic fallacy of so many romantic comedies by going on a few seconds longer.