Finally saw The Graduate. I knew half the story, the part about Dustin Hoffman being seduced by Mrs. Robinson, an older woman. Didn't know the rest of the story, about him falling in "love" with her daughter Elaine.I put the word in quotes because the movie assumed it made this clear, when it didn't: they went on one date, while he's still screwing her mother, then suddenly he's stalking her at Berkeley and wants to marry her. Elaine, for her part, plays all the cruel mind games she can.
Dustin Hoffman was great as the insecure, recently-graduated pushover. Despite being hailed as a brilliant scholar, he keeps falling for every tiniest, stupid manipulation the Robinson ladies pull.
Overall, women aren't portrayed very kindly in this film. They're all scheming --even Ben's mother makes a few petty cutting remarks. Meanwhile, the men are all one-dimensional.
But there are some really creative shots that alternate between Ben lounging around at home trying to figure out what to do with his life, and sneaking out to be with Mrs. Robinson. And the soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel is really great.
4 comments:
Ok, so as with Moulin Rouge, the justifications for the characters falling in love is a little abbreviated. But like Romeo & Juliet, the story is more concerned with what happens after that point, not with the process of falling.
Yeah, but all the stuff that happened afterwards was still devious female mind games. And Dustin Hoffman did a really good job of portraying the naive guy learning to navigate the scary world of sex and love.
I was trying to read some weird generational conflict-during-the-60s theme into it, but I wasn't really concentrating very hard. The scene at the end, where the two stave off everyone by wacking them with a cross in a church, was especially interesting. And for a couple supposedly in love, they barely even smiled at each other on the bus at the end. The ending scene conveyed more a sense of "Cool, look what we got away with, we just flaunted tradition. Crap, what do we do now?" I really like that concept.
Actually, now that I'm writing it out, I like the ending and the weirdness/social rebellion of it.
It's possible the lack of oxygen during the penicillin reaction affected my viewing thoughts, though.
I agree about the ending. It's been parodied so much (see Wayne's World 2), it's hard to see it with fresh eyes, but it's a very ambiguous end. There's a false resolution, which fits the movie but not your average love story.
(Also, the word verification blogger gave me was 'shtvland' -- that sounds dirty.)
True. I guess since I'd never seen it, but it's part of the lexicon of pop culture, I was expecting more. It was still good, though. Not sure what I was expecting. I'm okay with ambiguity!
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