I Love Mrs. Robinson

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2006)

The movie The Graduate which was directed by Mike Nichols in 1967 is a great story about a young boy and an older woman next door becoming intimate lovers by having an affair. Benjamin Braddock who was played by famous actor Dustin Hoffman is a boy who has just graduated college and is just turning 21 throughout the movie. He then encounters his next door neighbor's wife, Mrs. Robinson who makes him driver her home and then tries to seduce him which is unsuccessful. Then they end up by getting a hotel and start their affair with each other. This goes on for a little bit and then Benjamin is forced out on a date with the Robinson's daughter Elaine. Mrs. Robinson is furious at this and tells Benjamin not to go and he tells her not to worry he doesn't want her daughter.
He takes her out and she has such a bad time that she runs out crying from the strip club he had taken her too. He chases after her and ends up by kissing her and from then on he was in love with her. The difference between Mrs. Robinson and Elaine was that Benjamin liked the mother because she was beautiful and it was purely a sexual relationship. Elaine was different though he actually cared and loved for her and wanted to be with her. From there the mother confronts Benjamin and forces him to tell Elaine that he had an affair with her mother. She immediately cuts him out of his life and goes off to school. Where Benjamin finds her and tries to win her back, unfortunately her parents get in the way once again and she ends up by getting married to her boyfriend. He breaks into the wedding and interrupts the ceremonies and then Elaine and him see each other face to face and run away with each other onto a bus, with everyone chasing behind after them. I thought that it was interesting to see in the end that he acted the same way with Elaine as he did with her mother all along, and that was being silent or even secluding himself from the outside world. We saw him laying on the bed or the float in the pool seemingly forever throughout the movie. Then we see a different side of him when he starts hanging out with Elaine but then at the end of the movie it seemed like he was in his same state of seclusion as before. We see him just staring out into space sitting in the back of the bus with his lover Elaine right next to him. He didn't even look at her as well as not talking to her and that's how the scene ends. Also with the movie bringing in over 100 million dollars in sales with only putting in 3 million into the movie. Also with Simon & Garfunkel having numerous tracks in the movie corresponding with the narration was a big hit with the audiences back then, thus giving then even bigger genre of people coming to see the movie.