A Haunting Classic

Rating: 10/10 (3 March 2019)

It's true that "the Graduate" is a timeless masterpiece. It is also a piece of its time. As someone who experienced the sixties like Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), I have always recognized the film's ability to capture the zeitgeist of its time. Caught between changing sexual mores and the need to establish himself as a man, Ben feels unanchored. He is a product of his parents and his community, but he feels the need to break free of their stifling expectations.
Ben seems to be collecting memories, not advancing toward any defined goals. He is, at his core, desperate. As the United States grapples with gender roles, racial upheaval, the onus of a wartime draft, and the ever-present threat of the cold war, Ben feels an anxious nation turning its expectant eyes to him and those of his generation.
But Ben has no answers. He really has no idea where to begin to search for them. And so he is never running toward anything, always away. This is best exemplified by the final scene (which stands in marked contrast to the ending of "Picnic", for example).
Director Mike Nichols, aided by the lyric poetry of Paul Simon's music, has created a film that is simultaneously the quintessence of the sixties and a component of its creation. No pretty boy, like the others who were lined up to play his role, Dustin Hoffman eschews the part of the early-laurelled head being "chaired through the market-place" and instead gives us an everyman performance that captures the world of possibilities and the falseness of that world's promises. We feel him struggle under the weight of "eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase", like "plastics".
This is a film classic for its content and its style, which do transcend a moment, taking the viewer to an uncomfortable place, perhaps, but it might be the beginning of a run to some place better.