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= 5 stars

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross
Directed by Mike Nichols

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The opening sequence of The Graduate: Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) de-boards an airplane, rides a moving sidewalk through an airport, claims a suitcase and exits through glass doors to the larger world outside. Supposedly, this pretty much sums up what happens in The Graduate.

Let’s go over it again: Ben leaving the hermetically sealed college world, represented by the airtight cabin of an airplane. Next, he’s to follow a pre-arranged life-path as defined by his parents, represented the moving sidewalk. Along the way, he’s distracted by Mrs. Robinson (a female figure crossing his path while on the moving sidewalk, which Ben stares at intensely) and meets Elaine (the suitcase) someone whose suitability is questionable (the baggage carousel sign “Do They Match?”). All the while Ben wears an emotionless, zombie-like expression, until he finally exits the airport, a big smile on his face, and suitcase in hand.

This summation is a bit of a stretch, but works as an outline. I think it gives far too little credit to the influence of Mrs. Robinson in Ben’s post-graduate studies, and the film’s closing moments certainly does not feature a grinning-from-ear-to-ear Ben. The return to his zombie-like expression after the film’s emotional climax casts a shadow over everything preceding, placing an emotional question mark on themes of rebellion, non-conformity, purpose, and rewards.

Ben feels trapped by his parent’s expectations, or adult demands in a post-teenage world. The first scene shows Ben at a claustrophobic dinner party, being paraded around by his parents. Beneath his silence it’s easy to imagine his angst: is this all being an adult is? Plastic? Being forced into a scuba suit on your birthday and tossed into a swimming pool in front of your parents’ friends? Life after graduation can seem to the initiate nothing more than getting a job, breeding and getting started on dying.

Ben has lots to learn about the real world. He gets a pretty harsh awakening in the form of Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). One of Ben’s parent’s friends, she’s disillusioned with her husband, life and its safer vices. Mrs. Robinson smokes constantly wrapped in a leopard-print wardrobe. Ben is no match for her world-savvy manipulations, as she orders him to get her handbag, deftly luring him into the bedroom, or later when she questions his sexual prowess in order to get what she wants. In fact, her entire seduction sequence is quite stunningly clinical on Mrs. Robinson’s end. By the time Mr. Robinson arrives home, unaware of what’s just transpired, Ben’s been introduced to a litany of harsh realities: infidelity, casual sex, drinking, irony, and ignorance.

The affair with Mrs. Robinson provides Ben with a perfect outlet for his rebellious urges. But even there he must follow social conventions. At the Taft hotel the desk clerk mistakenly calls Ben the “Singleman” party. Ben is excluded from a wedding reception. On the automatic sidewalk, Ben’s guided to the obvious place for horny singles: the hotel bar. In walks Mrs. Robinson sporting a leopard print coat. A hilarious sequence ensues where Ben’s ineptitude regarding basic tasks such as checking into a hotel is compounded by his fear someone’s going to catch him in the act. The root of the humor is in Ben’s ignorance that affairs in hotels happen all the time, and nobody cares. Welcome to the real world.

As the affair progresses, we’re treated to a great music montage showing the passage of time as Ben moves from his parent’s pool to the hotel room with Mrs. Robinson, set to The Sound of Silence and by Simon and Garfunkel. Back is Ben’s zombie-like expression, mixed with sexual satisfaction, as he takes a drag on a cigarette. We can guess whose cigarettes they are.

Mrs. Robinson: you can learn a lot about a person by what they refuse to talk about. She sarcastically wants to talk about art with Ben, and then claims she doesn’t know anything about art. We learn her major in college was art. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together: when she was forced into marriage, she abandoned an art career, leaving her bitter about the whole subject. Ben can’t seem to figure this out. Whatever you major in during college, that’s what you spend your whole life doing, right? The sadness on Mrs. Robinson’s face at failed dreams contrasted with Ben’s insensitive laughter tells the story.

Things get infinitely more complicated when Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross) arrives. Mrs. Robinson makes Ben promise he won’t date her. The ultimate form of rebellion for Ben would be to break this promise. But if Elaine were ever to find out Ben’s been sleeping with her mother, all hell would break loose. Ben doesn’t seem able to think this far ahead. The dramatic tension sets up the course of the rest of the film.

The Graduate makes notable use of simple film techniques to define character relationships and emphasize plot points. Ben is submerged underwater while feeling trapped, framed visually between the legs of Mrs. Robinson while being seduced, and Ben and Mrs. Robinson undressing on either sides of a bedroom facing away from one another after a difficult conversation, represents the newly grown emotional distance between them. Plot points are emphasized similarly. When Elaine realizes what’s been going on between Ben and her mother, the camera literally drifts into focus on her angry face. In another classic scene, we see a wet, dejected Mrs. Robinson trapped in a corner. The camera draws back, showing her shrinking in the frame, and a much larger than life close-up Ben turns away from her. This one simple scene sums up so much, Mrs. Robinson fading from Ben’s life, Ben winning the confrontation, literally being painted into a corner. Life is forever changed for all three, and all is conveyed with little or no dialogue.

As a metaphor for the sixties, The Graduate demonstrates how people feel justified in rebelling against the system after a harsh realization of the “truth”: this system had vast immoralities hidden beneath, and you can “drop out.” It’s no surprise Elaine attends liberal Berkeley, and Ben is referred to as an “agitator.” Both find delicious pleasure in making choices their parents absolutely detest. Yet the triumphant feelings at film’s end have dark overtones as the potential consequences of their recklessness comes clear. Their future is anything but certain. Two characters ride away on a bus, and the zombie-like expressions return. Was it all a cheap thrill? After, they’re still on a bus, riding on a road in a city still part of the system. Eventually they’ll have to get off of the bus, then what? And what of the consequences: by breaking away from institutions of old, and choosing free love and rebellion, our society is left adrift and arguably with worse morality than before. The return of the zombie-like expressions at the end of the film argues that youthful rebellion is not so clearly the right choice.

Once it’s realized that real life consists more of what’s going on beneath the surface than what people willingly reveal, this film’s emotional resonance becomes clear. The weariness of the world’s pressures and dark secrets don’t always show. Sometimes the most painful hurt manifests as the cold stare of a frowning housewife, brooding before a too-loud television, smoldering cigarette in hand.

IMDB: The Graduate
Wikipeida: The Graduate
Rotten Tomatoes: The Graduate 91%