A Sound of Silence

Rating: 10/10 (17 October 2006)

When I reviewed "Rebel Without a Cause" I said that it was probably the best film ever about coming of age. I still hold that view, but "The Graduate" is its closest rival. The central character Benjamin Braddock, although older than Jim Stark in the earlier film, is another "rebel without a cause". He is, admittedly, an unlikely rebel, this being the late sixties when there were plenty of rebels with causes they passionately believed in. He has no political views, does not take drugs, wears his hair short, dresses smartly and has remained a virgin throughout the era of free love.
Benjamin has recently graduated, probably from a prestigious East Coast university, and returns to his parents' house in an upper-class suburb of Los Angeles where he receives a triumphant welcome. Benjamin's problem is one that affects many university graduates. He does not know what to do with the rest of his life. His academic life, and accompanying sporting and extracurricular activities, have provided him with such a sense of intellectual and emotional satisfaction that anything else is likely to seem an anti-climax. His degree is a triumph which nothing in the rest of his life seems likely to equal. The idea of settling down into a routine job (in one famous scene a friend of his father advises him to get into plastics) does not appeal to him, but he cannot think of anything else to do with this life. (He tells his father that he wants his future to be "different").
Benjamin drifts into an affair with Mrs Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner. (We never learn her Christian name). She is happy to use Benjamin for sex, although he is looking for a more committed relationship. The two have little in common, and Benjamin's attempts to engage Mrs Robinson in conversation fall disastrously flat. Eventually his parents, supported by Mr Robinson (who at this stage knows nothing of his wife's affair), engineer a date between him and the Robinsons' daughter Elaine. Benjamin and Elaine find themselves falling for one another, but Mrs Robinson is furious at this development and, prompted by a complex mixture of emotions (partly jealousy, partly the feeling that an aimless drifter who sleeps with a married woman is not a suitable match for her daughter), does everything she can to frustrate the romance, even threatening to tell her husband the whole truth if Benjamin dates Elaine.
I was surprised to read Roger Ebert's recent review in which he recanted his youthful enthusiasm for "The Graduate" and concluded that it was merely a sixties period piece. Surprised, because my own experience was very different- I fell in love with the film when I first saw it in my student days more than twenty years ago and still love it today. (I feel- although the Academy clearly disagreed- that it should have won the "Best Picture" Oscar in 1968). Why do I love it? Well, let me count the ways. Firstly, I love it because I love Simon and Garfunkel (in my view up there with the Beatles) who provide the soundtrack with some of their finest songs, "The Sound of Silence", "Scarborough Fair" and, of course, "Mrs Robinson". All of these have some relevance to the plot; "Scarborough Fair" is about lost love and "The Sound of Silence" (among other things) about the difficulty of communicating with words.
Secondly, I love the film for its well-written and often witty dialogue- the "plastics" scene and lines such as "Mrs Robinson, I think you're trying to seduce me" have remained with me ever since my first viewing. Thirdly, there is the famous ending, among the most memorable and emotionally satisfying endings of any movie.
Then there is the acting, above all two performances of a lifetime from Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. Much has been made of the fact that, although there is supposed to be about twenty years difference between the ages of Mrs Robinson and Benjamin, Bancroft was only six years older than Hoffman. In my view, however, that does not affect the quality of their acting at all. Hoffman is completely believable as Benjamin- shy, gauche, confused and lacking in self-confidence, but possessed of an inner decency and integrity. In a distinguished acting career he has made a number of great films- "Tootsie", "Death of a Salesman" and "Rain Man" all come to mind- but this is still my favourite. As for Anne Bancroft, although she made many films, when she died last year "The Graduate" was the one mentioned in all the obituaries. Her Mrs Robinson is in her late thirties or early forties, beautiful, seductive and sophisticated. She is also deeply unhappy- an alcoholic, bored with her marriage and with life in general. Although she behaves badly towards Benjamin, Bancroft makes her a character with whom we can sympathise. Her life took a wrong turning when she became pregnant as a student and was forced into a shotgun marriage, and has found herself trapped ever since.
Finally, I love "The Graduate" for the timeless way it deals with the generation gap. Hoffman and Mike Nichols could have made Benjamin into a typical sixties rebel- long-haired, free-loving, drug-taking and full of righteous indignation about Vietnam and the Bomb. Had they done so, the film would today indeed look like what Ebert called it, something out of a time capsule. Instead, "The Graduate" both comes out of its era and transcends it. Nichols realised that the real generation gap is based on something far wider than differing tastes in clothes and music, wider than differing opinions about sex and drugs and Vietnam. The true generation gap is the inevitable disparity in outlook between those like Benjamin and Elaine whose adult life is just beginning and those like their parents whose life is half-over. When these two groups try to discuss their differences, the result is often a sound of silence. 10/10