The Graduate

The Graduate; romantic tragicomedy, USA, 1967; D: Mike Nichols, S: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, Brian Avery, Murray Hamilton, William Daniels, Elizabeth Wilson, Richard Dreyfuss

The 21-year old Benjamin Bradock has finished college with brilliance, so his rich parents organize a party at their home in Los Angeles. Despite all that, he evaluates his life as pointless and somnolent. After the party, Benjamin drives the older Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's friend, to her home where she tries to seduce him, but just then Mr. Robinson enters and Benjamin runs away. Still, Benjamin agrees to meet her in a hotel, where he loses his virginity with her. Their affair continues for months, until Benjamin meets and falls in love with Mrs. Robinson's daughter Elaine and decides to marry her. Elaine refuses when she finds out he slept with her mother, but just as she was about to marry someone else, Benjamin stops the wedding and the two of them flee in a bus.

There is one visually fascinating moment in "The Graduate" that makes such an impact that it has influence on the whole rest of the film. It is the sequence some 15 minutes into the film, when Mrs. Robinson suddenly enters the room with Benjamin in it and locks the door; but although she is naked, the camera shows just her face, while her intimate parts get almost imperceptibly flashed on the screen several times in just a few milliseconds (!) in front of the embarrassed face of the main hero, almost in playfully self-censored way, getting almost too fast to see anything. Although this fabulously intelligent masterpiece contains many moments that are funnier than some lowbrow comedy—even though it is actually a drama—exactly that hyper-dynamic sequence sums up the entire film as special and stimulative because it is at the same time inventive, groundbreaking, unusual, quirky—and laugh out loud funny. Mike Nichols' magnum opus, "The Graduate" seems at first glance like some standard, conventional classic—but it is not. It is a very personal, genuine and touching film that many viewers can identify with.

It contains a universal story about a young hero who is uncertain of what he wants to do with his life and future, and experiences his first love in a very unusual way, thereby opening several themes about the older generation (Mrs. Robinson) trying to control, take advantage of and subjugate the inexperienced younger generation, but the latter wants to live their life their own way—the way Benjamin and Elaine flee from their parents and their plans, touched the zeitgeist of its time, not only by encapsulating how the new generation has to break all ties with the previous one to grow up and become independent, but also how the late 60s forged the 'modern movie' era that broke all ties with the previous conservative filmmaking. It is completely justified that the film was awarded with several prizes and established the genius actor Dustin Hoffman as one of the best American actors of the 20th century. The whole story is full with quirky and alive moments, but it also has two coveted inner-directing moments that are directed on a higher cinematic level: one is the frame of Mrs. Robinson's leg holding Benjamin in the background in a "clinch"; the other the sequence where Benjamin finally admits to Elaine he slept with her mother, Mrs. Robinson, and Elaine is in the foreground, in focus, whereas Mrs. Robinson is in the background, out of focus—but after the reveal, Elaine turns around towards her, and Mrs. Robinson is in focus, runs away, while Elaine turns back, but is now out of focus, as if her emotional state dissolved and she is just a shell of herself. Although very simple and despite an overlong finale, humorous romance "The Graduate" is a shining achievement—and one of the purest examples of realization of true love caught on film.

Grade:++++