The Graduate (1967)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

Mike Nichols' "The Graduate" has value today because its success came right on the cusp of a time when American attitudes toward sexuality, the purpose of success and the discontent with the suburban ideal were brewing more and more with the general public. Since the 1950's there had been artists like Beat Poets Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsburg who were exploring those ideas, but they were dismissible as malcontents. The Beat movement was an object of ridicule to mainstream audiences, its adherents relegated to B-movies like "High School Confidential" or diluted and lampooned as hapless slackers like Bob Denver's Maynard G. Kreb's in the "Dobie Gillis" tv series.

But this movie presents a young man, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), who had every reason to be content with his life. He is accomplished and smart, well-connected through his rich Santa Barbara parents, reasonably attractive to the opposite sex, and gifted with the ability to stay on in grad school if he wished and thus avoid being sent to Vietnam. (Although that war is never even eluded to in the film. Its this lack of specific detail about the era--while still capturing the feeling of shifting attitudes in America--that makes it hold up so well today.)

But he isn't happy. In fact he's suffering a definite case of ennui. The movie follows Benjamin's descent into a casual affair with a certain Mrs. Robinson (the great Anne Bancroft, in a epochal performance ) which only makes Benjamin unhappier. Suddenly, and in a concession to all romantic movies, he has a transformation and goes about with improbable success to win the heart of a woman more his age: the un-jaded and beautiful daughter, Elaine (Katherine Ross). In the end the pair unite and run off together and all ends well...except we really don't know for sure. The film leaves us with an uneasy sense that these two have embarked on an adult life that could lead them anywhere, even apart.

There's so little not to like about this film. The great Simon and Garfunkel tunes coupled with Robert Surtees inventive cinematography; Hoffman's perfect playing as an overgrown adolescent who's book-smart but sexually naive; the total incomprehension of their son's behavior by Mr. and Mrs. Braddock; the nightmare first date of Benjamin and Elaine, that starts in a Sunset Blvd strip club (!) and Benjamin's desperate jaunt down Californias' highways in his sports car in the finale to stop Elaine's wedding. . (Somehow he gets no speeding tickets? OK, it's not a documentary.)

I almost forgot the perfectly-pitched church ending that tops anything done before or since and the early predatory playfulness of the character of Mrs Robinson, which turns into an exercise in control-freakishness. Hoffman was 30 when this movie was made, but Ms. Bancroft was only six years older in real life than her "boy toy", but she makes herself look and act older.

It's a movie worth seeing..maybe for the first or tenth time. And the great thing about a great movie is that you don't need all the bells and whistles that a DVD Anniversary set brings you. Just pull it off the dusty VHS shelf at your local rental store. The movie itself gives you all you need for enjoyment.