Review of The Graduate (1967) by Hank H — 01 Jul 2015

This film came in number 17 on the AFI list. It actually moved back from number 7 and it is easy to see why. The film has aged in ways that other films from the 1950s and 60s haven't. Regardless, the film is certainly influential.

The film is depressing, however, it has a dosage of comedy (thank you Dustin Hoffman). The film is a film about broken down people. The older Mrs. Robinson seduces the graduate Benjamin. Caught up in despair and heartache.

Mrs. Robinson (Bancroft) is normally manipulative and fierce towards Benjamin, however, you see brief glimpses of her mortality scattered throughout the film. The moment Benjamin reveals to her daughter about the affair, the moment she tries to call the police on Benjamin, and the huge fight at the end where she slaps her own daughter in a desperate attempt to keep her away from Ben.

The scene of unhappily married Elaine and her rescuer Ben barricading the angry mob in the church is very symbolic of a time when old values were thrown off to be replaced by new ones, which usually are much worse than the old.

The Judeo-Christian worldview was tragically thrown away to be replaced by a time of drug addiction, unhealthy sensual pleasures (it was nothing new but it became more common), and diseases from those pleasures and the numerous people they slept with.

In fact, I think many were glad to enter the 80s and step out of the dreary, depressing 70s. The 60s were a time when great leaders like MLK and JFK were senselessly shot down. It was a time when a war in Vietnam brought unrest not only to Indochina but the United States as well.

The peace movement swept in in opposition of the war and the war came to make less and less sense as it droned on. A sense of nostalgia is felt for a time like the 50s when things seemed simpler. Even as complex as the 50s were, they were not as complex as the decade that followed.