You Haven’t Seen The Graduate?!

            One of my coworkers likes to tease me about my reaction when she has not seen a film I deem iconic. You haven't seen Miller's Crossing?! But these days I use one of her favs, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s first notable appearance in our mass culture, as the central text of my pre-collegiate, developmental writing course. I ask students to complete a number of descriptive exercises leading to a descriptive essay. I used to ask the students to compose an analysis of the role of one image in the film, but I’m scaling back, allowing them to be a bit more general. I’ve learned that developmental writers just need to put sentences together, and yet I can’t help wonder whether my students are able to identify with Ben.

Young people today are just so…odd. You wonder how they achieve any complex psychological understanding given that they’re perpetually hooked into their newfangled texty machines. I know, I know: every generation finds a certain, sick comfort in denigrate the next. Kids these days! But, seriously, do these ‘Millennials’ ever even cease enjoying commodities long enough to realize that they’re unsatisfied by them? I wonder. And, yet, they still seem to identify with Ben...at least for the moments during class when I make them put away their goddamn phones. Don't make me take that phone away!

But who am I to judge? I hate to admit it, but I didn't see Mike Nichols’ classic until serving as a graduate teaching assistant for film courses at Washington University. In my defense, our access to media was far more limited in the dark ages of the late 20^th century.  Back in my day, when you subscribed to HBO, you got exactly one (1) channel. Streaming? Nope. Netflix? Nope. Blockbuster had some older films, but if they weren’t in stock, you were S.O.L. Of course, some ghetto theatres that played older films (remember? they used to charge a buck). In the good ol’e days you had to actively seek out media, and I guess The Graduate never made it to the top of my list.

Hal B, AP, & CT

Then I went to college: my roomie, Hal B., and I didn’t even have a television in our dorm room freshman year. And cable wasn’t even available in the on-campus apartments that we lived in sophomore year. That year Hal B. and G-Regulator, J-Money, CT, and I got our hands on a VCR and amassed enough tapes to establish a satisfying rotation. We self-medicated, ate microwave burritos or mac-and-cheese out-of-the-box, and watched Coming to America, Star Wars, Up in Smoke, Dazed and Confused, and Fasttimes at Ridgemont High over and over and over again. 

Hal B, AP, CT, G-Regulator, J-Muny

I know that I remember those times as happier for me than they were…but that’s how I remember them through the lens of nostalgia. We smoked and drank home-brewed beer and listened to new grunge albums and went to parties and concerts.  I don’t know…maybe I wasn’t happy, but I felt alive and young. That’s for sure. Or maybe I was happy and I just didn’t know it. And then junior and senior year went pretty much the same way and then I graduated…with ‘high honors’ and rather vague plans about going to graduate school….

But that could wait.  I was going to take a year off to travel.  I had already travelled quite a bit, but I wanted to hunker down in this great place in the Spanish Basque country, this little jet-setting jewel of a town the likes of which one only finds in Latinate regions: San Sebastian.  And it was more of the same there.  Parties and shenanigans and, for the first time really for me, girls. Parties and girls. That’s really all I was really interested in when I was 22 and 23. I lived to revel. Can you blame me? Hey, at least I read a lot during the day (on the beach…while drinking beer and smoking). Okay: so, admittedly, I had issues. And I had limited funds.  So, ultimate I had to cut my “year” of travel short…by eight months…and I did the one thing that was never in my post-collegiate playbook: I moved back in with my parents.

I spent weeks lying around depressed, just drinking beer.  And then I got a job…and stayed depressed…and kept drinking beer. I won’t bore you with the details, but moving back home is productive in only one capacity: it compels young people to move forward in life, to mature, to make some feeble steps toward adulthood.  Eventually I paid off my debts, earned a pretty sweet deal at Wash U, and moved into my very own apartment.

And little did I know that along the way I had imitated art, had spent a Benjamin Braddock-like summer coming to terms with my own lack of clarity for my own life, had (contrary to every thought running through my pea-brain) experienced the grand irony of joining with the mass of human experience in my abject post-adolescent feelings of isolation and alienation, of the absence of any option in life that seemed ‘mine.’ Imagine my amazement when, among my first teaching assignments, I first laid eyes on Nichols’ film.

Not only does The Graduate narrate the story of coming to terms with the end of one’s adolescence – I’ve done that well enough right here. Rather, the film perfectly figures – in extensive use of motif and metaphor – the fundamental alienation of integration with our adult world as well as the emptiness of maturation. That is, there really is no answer for the loss of one’s youth other than to accept that it’s just gone. From the opening credits to the closing shots of the film, The Graduate is a seamless and focused expression of the melancholy inherent in getting older. And, yet, it’s funny.  Really, really funny.

The film opens with a close-up of Ben’s characteristically catatonic gaze as he waits to deplane at LAX. And from that moment on, I could write a paragraph or two about nearly every shot in the film. The film is not ‘perfect’ in its artistry, but even its imperfections lend the film a charm and awkwardness characteristic of its protagonist, and, more importantly, of its viewer.  For I suppose that the very reason that this film is so important to myself and others is that each image of Benjamin is like an uncanny mirror into the past – Benjamin is the viewer.

As the credits roll, Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” begins to play. Ben, wearing a dark suit, is pulled along on an airport people-mover. Framed to right of the screen, he does not walk forward, as do a handful of blurry figures in the foreground.  The credits appear in front of the white, cinder-block wall that forms the background on the left of the frame. 

Toward the end of the credits, the scene cuts to a piece of black luggage moving along a conveyor belt; of course the luggage is also framed to right of the screen and also in front of a white wall over which appear credits. And if the visual metaphor has not sufficiently impressed itself upon the viewer a sign reading “Do they match?” appears in the foreground.  Of course, Ben retrieves this piece of luggage at the end of the shot. So, before we’ve had a word of dialogue, Nichols has effectively established the fundamental reluctance and lack of agency with which Ben approaches his future.

As “Sounds of Silence” ends, a shot of Ben leaving the airport dissolves to a rather gloomy close-up of our protagonist, gloomy in both mood and outward appearance. The details of the shot set-up are important. The high-contrast lighting leaves pools of light along one side of Ben’s face.  His skin wears a sheen of perspiration, and his eyes gaze off into a nothingness below the plane of the shot. A large aquarium forms the entire background of the shot, lending the impression that Ben’s head is actually under water. A small harpoon-wielding scuba diver decorates the aquarium’s habitat. The only sound we hear is that of the aquarium’s filter bubbling. Ben himself sports neatly parted hair and a shirt and tie drawn to. Since he is lying back in bed, the tie further constricts his neck. Many other details of the ensuing shot work to underscore Ben’s general apprehension to live a life of expectations laid out for him by his parents, emblems of post-WWII parenthood.  But the most intriguing element of this opening shot is how perfectly it establishes the central motif of the film: water.  In what follows, I doubt very much that I’ll say anything new. In fact, let's just call my analysis plagiarism with a purpose: I just want to compel you to feel the value of this film, to watch it, or to watch it again, and to understand just how special a film it is. It would be a shame to let such a treasure drown in the over-abundance of media available to us in this age. So, go on and click "read more"...

Ben is hiding out in his room because he delays joining the homecoming party thrown in his honor. (Neither party thrown “for” Ben in the film features a single guest below middle-age.)  Among the anonymous adults in attendance, only two stand out.  The first, Mrs. Robinson, will provide the central plot element of the film in making herself available to Ben – sexually – later in the evening.  The second, Mr. McGuire, will not make another appearance in the film…though he does provide one of the most famous words uttered in American cinematic history: “Plastics.”  Significantly, Mr. McGuire delivers his simple, and simply unsatisfying, vision for Ben’s future on the Braddock’s pool deck, with the cement pond in the background.

After rejecting Mrs. Robinson’s indecent proposal, the film cuts to a second party “for” Ben: his 21^st birthday party.  Mr. Braddock is making quite a speech for his friends while simultaneously cajoling Ben – who waits behind the scenes – admonishing him to “not disappoint everyone” in modeling and demonstrating his birthday present: a scuba suit. 

The shot cuts from a shockingly funny image of Ben in full diving gear to a POV shot out of the diving mask. We see Ben’s parents egging him on into the pool.  We see the awkward flippers rise and fall.  But the only sound we hear is that of Ben’s Vaderesque breathing. Not only does an obedient Ben enter the pool and swim around, but, when he attempts to emerge, his parents push him back under. He stares around into the artificial blue nothingness, mechanically breathing. 

And then the film cuts away from the POV shot to one of my favorite images in the film: a shot of scuba-clad, harpoon-wielding Ben standing on the bottom of the pool.  He has become the diver in his aquarium. The camera floats away and Ben’s diminishing image becomes occluded by the artificial murk of the pool. Here the monotony of Ben’s breathing is interrupted by a “sound bridge,” the cinematic inclusion of sound from the following scene, a convention that ties two scenes together. The sound is of Ben on the phone with Mrs. Robinson.  And we know that it is out of his overwhelming sense suffocating desperation at the hands of his parents that he has decided to take up Mrs. Robinson on her offer.

After sealing the deal with Mrs. R, the film fades into the one of the most revered montage sequences in film history – it is the antipode of the of those sports training sequences typified by Karate Kid or Rocky IV, the type hilariously ridiculed on South Park. During the “Sounds of Silence” montage the artistry of the shot composition and editing generates a seamlessness to Ben’s summer as he moves from his beer-drinking lounging by the pool to his repetitive rendezvous with Mrs. Robinson.  Essentially, the Braddock household and the Taft Hotel become one space of drifting.  

At the end of the montage, Ben goes for a final swim, diving into the pool, swimming to the surface to leap upon— 

The shot unexpectedly cuts during the action of leaping on a pool raft to bend Ben landing, post-coitus, onto Mrs. Robinson’s body lying on a bed at the Taft. 

At this point, Nichols again utilizes a sound bridge.  We hear Mr. Braddock asking his son, “Ben, what are you doing?”  Ben turns back in bed toward the camera.  The scene cuts in a faux reverse shot to Mr. Braddock standing by the edge of his pool.  

We hear Ben answer: “I’m just drifting. Sometimes it’s good to drift.”  And it’s true, literally and figuratively. While Ben has no direction, he has been able to use Mrs. Robinson to drift.

The use of the water motif dries up a bit at that point, though it does resurface as a few other useful moments – as Ben’s parent’s pressure Ben to take Elaine, Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, out on a date...

...or as Ben’s arrives on a rainy day to pick up Elaine for their second date. 

I’ll allow you to explore the film for yourself…because that’s what I want for you, that’s what those whose choose to appreciate film deserve, and that’s what such a beautifully wrought film deserves.

What else could I say about The Graduate? I could elaborate on the structure of the montage sequences. I could dissertate upon the Oedipal characterization of Mrs. Robinson and her similarities to Mrs. Braddock. We could talk about the use of black and white in the mis-en-scene as ways of constructing the paths available to Ben…and Elaine. Similarly, we could explore the use of light and shadow, the use of wide-angle, telephoto, and zoom lenses. We could discuss Ben’s car, an Alpha Romeo. We could explore fathers or religion. In fact, even in a rundown, I am bound to leave out numerous important elements of the film. I have not mentioned the astounding nature of Dusting Hoffman’s and Anne Bancroft’s performances: they are underrated. The film is hilarious. The film is poignant. The film is never simple or sappy or sentimental or clichéd. It is as close to perfect as any film I’ve ever seen. But most obviously, I could try to tell you what I think of the film’s ending, an ending unlike any other, a really perfect ending.  

But that would be to rob you of the primary joy of the film.  So, just promise me to see the film.  Promise me that you will think about its conclusion, that you will talk it over with whomever you watch the film with. And I’ll promise not spoil it for you…