The Graduate (1967)

Rating: 10/10 (8 May 2014)

Let's be honest; in terms of cinema, 1967 was a pretty spectacular year. Mike Nichols's "The Graduate", for example, is very high on the list of best films released in 1967 (or really, ever). This film truly is quite brilliant. Based of Charles Webb's 1963 novel of the same name, "The Graduate" focuses on the story of a young college graduate who is quickly trapped in a messy affair with one of his parents friends. Not knowing what to do with his life post-college, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) gets involved with an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), and beings a long and complicated process of equal parts self-loathing and self-discovery. Unfortunately for everybody involved, Benjamin quickly falls in love with Mrs. Robinson's much more age appropriate daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross) and now has to face the consequences of telling the girl that he loves that he's been sleeping with her mother and then also tell the woman he's been sleeping with that oops, he's fallen in love with her daughter.
As equally interesting as the plot, the way the film was made is just as neat. With witty dialogue and superb acting, the characters were portrayed in a way that was extremely believable. The editing of the movie was also done quite well. With beautiful montage sequences and really cool point-of-view filming, and the addition of Simon and Garfunkel's music to really make the film what it was, "The Graduate" was created, in terms of both form and content, in a way that is both brilliant and representative of issues of issues, such as self doubt and not knowing what to do with your future, that almost everyone must face at some point in their lives.