I’m not likening “The Graduate” to an adult movie because it is frank in its portrayal of sex, it’s definitely no more objectionable than “Midnight Cowboy” or “A Clockwork Orange,” but because it is the kind of movie that makes you feel gross and uncomfortable for watching. The motion camera shots and point-of-view perspectives that are intended to make you feel closer to the action does nothing to help with the creepy, voyeuristic feeling either. In fact if you take out the obvious factor “The Graduate” has every other stereotypical element of skin-flicks: bad acting, bad dialogue, worse music and they jump right into the sexing.
Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is a total emo kid. He always wants to be by himself, is distant to his parents and has been given everything from a college education to an Italian sports car but still feels like life dealt him a shitty hand. At his graduation party he rudely snubs old neighbors and family friends because he is so wrapped up in his fear of the future. There is a real opportunity here to make Ben the perfect example of how money does not buy happiness or emotional stability, but the way his parents beam about him and the way he looks down on the other shallow, “plastic” people in his life just make him seem faux-angsty.
The shooting style of this film bends over backwards to convey to notion that Ben feels alone: he is frequently shown in close-ups in crowded places that deceive the viewer into thinking he is by himself, his bedroom where he likes to hole himself up is claustrophobic and drab and in the opening credits the only person we see is Ben accompanied by the strains of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” Oooh, deep!
When Ben is approached by an overly aggressive family friend, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) at his party for a ride home it becomes evident that Ben is a total train-wreck socially. His dialogue and physical mannerisms in her presence are clumsy and awkward and, even though it is obvious, he vocalizes his suspicion that she is attempting to get him into bed, which, without requiring any further background information, clearly indicates that Ben’s interaction with women is extremely limited. Eventually Mrs. Robinson corners Ben in her empty house leading to a rapid succession of quick cuts of different parts of her naked body. Though the nudity is literally “blink-and-you-miss-it” I still feel like they might as well have gone full-on with it instead pretending that only showing a split-second of a bare nipple is somehow more artistic or high-brow than focusing on it.
“Oh no, Mrs. Robinson. I think, I think you're the most attractive of all my parents' friends. I mean that.” (Benjamin Braddock “The Graduate”)
For all the bad things I can say about the character of Ben Braddock however, I will also say in his defense that the adults around him are total freak-shows. Even though his parents dote over him, there is one scene where Ben tries to convey his insecurities to his father and is met with an exasperated sigh and his father asking “What is it?” as if it is inconvenient to have to bond with his son on any kind of significant plane. Also, when Mr. Robinson arrives home early and thwarts his wife’s attempt to bang Ben, he proceeds to lecture the nervous 20 year old on how he needs to sow his oats and have a fling, then more or less offers up his own daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross).
At Ben’s 21st birthday party, we see another example of his parents showing him off to their friends (which also gives the impression that Ben probably doesn’t have too many friends of his own) as they force Ben into a ridiculous scuba diving display in their pool which actually feels more like an excuse to show off the fact that they bought him a scuba suit. The party is then shown from Ben’s perspective, including the lens being framed to resemble the lens of a diving mask and the only audible sound is Ben’s amplified breathing. As he hesitantly submerges himself in the pool, his parents are shown encouraging him, even pushing him (literally and figuratively) into the water, despite his obvious trepidation. This is all very clearly meant to continue beating the claustrophobia motif into our brains, as well as illustrate his parents’ apparent indifference to his isolation. It is all meant to be very symbolic but it really just feels like a “Creature from the Black Lagoon” outtake.
Perhaps finally driven to a breaking point by his parents, or just looking to make extreme changes in his life, Ben decides after his birthday debacle to take Mrs. Robinson up on her offer. Ben’s naivety is evident as Mrs. Robinson has to essentially coach him through every step in the process from booking a hotel room to the actual act itself. As much as I generally didn’t enjoy this filmgoing experience, I do have to give credit to the director and actors for making this scene so clumsy and uncomfortable that you actually feel like you are a part of it. I hope it was intentional.
Once Ben has closed the deal with Mrs. Robinson, he begins to undergo some radical, almost unrealistically radical, changes. He is much less tense, more apt to talking back to his parents and even becomes kind of a hipster. So essentially he goes from being an unlikeable whiner to an unlikeable arrogant prick carrying around an undeserved sense of accomplishment. Of course, the latter is only a front because, as his later scenes with Mrs. Robinson illustrate, he is just an emotionally confused boy who thinks he might be in love for the first time.
The last half of the movie is spent basically chipping away at Ben’s character to show us how sad, lonely and vulnerable he is as he struggles with his feelings for Mrs. Robinson as well as her daughter Elaine, who he first begrudgingly dates, then realizes he is in love with after torturing and alienating her. What follows is the framework for every bad romance comedy cliché that would follow. Ben stalks Elaine halfway across California because he has no concept of how creepy it is and even ends up busting in on and breaking up her storyline conveniently fast wedding. The symbolic last scene shows Ben and Elaine standing up to their parents’ generation by standing up to the Robinson parents and embarrassing them in front of all their friends by fleeing the wedding together and getting on a random bus with an unidentified destination, a metaphor for the big question mark hanging over their future.
“The Graduate” works really, really hard at trying to get us to see the angst and isolation of youth through the dark and moody soul of Ben Braddock, but really it is just an entire movie of what would be hash-tagged on twitter as #richkidproblems. I never feel for him as a protagonist because he never gives me a good reason to. He never outwardly rebels to his oppressive parents and instead passively/aggressively gets his revenge by banging their friend and I always feel like his relationship with Elaine is nothing more than an effort to get Mrs. Robinson’s attention or transference in which he uses Elaine to somehow be closer to her in his own twisted way. The only truly sympathetic character in the film is Elaine, who is hardly developed at all as we only see her in the latter half of the film and even then she is constantly deferring to Ben.
However, the one thing that stands out above all with me is the Simon & Garfunkel-heavy soundtrack. Maybe I am dating myself a little bit here, but I can’t even get my head around this being the music of a frustrated youth counterculture because in my lifetime Paul Simon has basically been the music of choice of the middle-aged yuppies the film tries so hard to tear down.
