Film: The Graduate
Director: Mike Nichols
Country: Germany / USA
Released: December 1967
Runtime: 106 minutes
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Studio: Lawrence Turman Productions
Influenced: Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Richard Linklater, Cameron Crowe
To my mind, The Graduate is one of those films that is so much funnier to watch when you're older. On first viewing in my early 20s, when I was young and earnest myself, some of the nuances were lost on me, and I don't remember finding the film as funny as I did two decades later. In the lead roles of Benjamin Braddock and Mrs Robinson, Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft deliver comic performances of great nuance and subtlety, and I particularly love the scene where Benjamin forgets to give Mrs Robinson the room number. Also memorable is the brilliant sequence of Simon & Garfunkel songs overlaying the footage of a serene and sated Hoffman drinking post-coital beer in bed and on a lilo in the swimming pool.
Mike Nichols' movie follows the story of a recent college graduate who is struggling to find meaning and purpose in his life. Feeling alienated and disconnected from his parents and their affluent social circle, Benjamin is seduced by Mrs Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner. One of its most notable innovations was its use of popular music, which was highly unusual for a Hollywood film at the time. The film's soundtrack features classic Simon & Garfunkel songs like The Sound of Silence and Mrs Robinson, both integrated into the film's narrative to the extent that they help to define its themes and tone.
Despite his misgivings, Benjamin embarks on an affair with Mrs Robinson, but soon finds himself drawn to her daughter, Elaine (played by Katharine Ross). The film follows Benjamin's attempts to navigate his complicated relationships with both women, and his gradual realisation that he must break free from the constraints of his privileged upbringing in order to find his own path in life. A satirical comedy-drama that explores themes of youth, alienation and sexual politics, the film also broke new ground in terms of its visual style. Nichols used a range of experimental techniques, such as jump cuts and hand-held camera work, to create a sense of disorientation and instability that reflected Benjamin's state of mind. The film's use of unconventional editing and imagery has had a lasting impact on the language of cinema.
Two recurring visual motifs in the film are the swimming pool and the cross-shaped stanchions on the freeway. The swimming pool appears in several key scenes and appears to symbolise the shallow, materialistic upper-class suburban lifestyle that Benjamin finds himself trapped in, serving as a metaphor for his sense of alienation and disconnection from the world around him. As for the cross-shaped stanchions on the freeway, which appear repeatedly in shots of Benjamin driving his Alfa Romeo convertible along the freeway, the cross symbol here is clearly a reference to Christianity, symbolising his search for a spiritual or moral centre in his life.
As well as have a lasting impact on popular culture, and boosting the profile of Simon & Garfunkel, The Graduate also launched the film careers of both Hoffman and Nichols, both of whom went on to become major figures in American cinema. Hoffman's performance as Benjamin helped to establish him as one of the most talented and versatile actors of his generation, while German-born Nichols transitioned from successful Broadway playwright to sought-after Hollywood director, overseeing a series of critically-acclaimed movies from Catch-22 (1970) to Working Girl (1988) and The Birdcage (1996). My only question when I get to the end of The Graduate is, did Benjamin really deserve a happy ending?
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