"Would you like me to seduce you?" (The Graduate (DVD))

Member Name: frannyfortune

Product:	The Graduate (DVD)
Date:	27/08/01 (575 review reads)
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This film seduced me a long, long time ago, and the affair isn’t anywhere near being over yet. ‘The Graduate’ was filmed in 1967, and is one of those classic stories that doesn’t seem to date. Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) is fresh out of college and unsure about what direction he wants his life to go in. When a friend of his parents, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), makes him an offer he can’t refuse, he finds things slipping pleasurably out of his control.

Ben feels utterly alienated from the suburban world of his parents, with their cocktail parties and their luxurious house and pool. He doesn’t seem to have any friends his own age, or none that he wants to keep in touch with after college. He’s returned home, having won a prestigious scholarship, and quickly finds himself being used as a trophy by his parents, and expected to play the part of the golden boy to all their friends. Hoffman plays these scenes with total detachment – I would use the word ‘stunned’, but that would imply some type of emotion. He looks like a man in shock, barely able to function. In one scene he struggles to express his feelings to his father:

Ben : I’m just…

Mr. Braddock : …worried?

Ben : Well…

Mr. Braddock : About what?

Ben : I guess about my future.

Mr. Braddock : What about it?

Ben : I don’t know. I want it to be…

Mr. Braddock : …to be what?

Ben : …Different.

Poor Ben, this is as close as he gets to actually communicating with anyone for most of the film. His isolation is also shown beautifully by some clever imagery – most notably the scene where his parents have bought him a set of scuba gear, and coerced him into giving a display for all their friends. We experience the scene from his viewpoint, inside the scuba mask. All around are smiling faces, his paren
ts encouraging him, people cracking jokes and laughing, but their mouths move noiselessly, and the only sound we hear is Ben’s breathing within the mask. He jumps into the pool, swims to the bottom and stays there, standing alone in a ludicrous outfit, completely submerged, listening to the total silence.

Ben’s affair with Mrs. Robinson promises to at least bring some sort of human contact into his life.

“Would you like me to seduce you?”

What a line. She’s perched on a stool, with her leg raised, head slightly tilted and a feline smile on her face. Who could resist? Bancroft is absolutely superb in this role – beautiful, sexy, predatory, scheming, utterly composed – yet also managing to show a vulnerabilty which allows us to sympathise with her. The scenes between her and Hoffman are the best and most convincing of all, and anchor the film in reality, allowing later, more unbelievable events to still feel ‘right’ - despite Bancroft being only five years older than Hoffman in real life (he was 30 – I know, 30! but he seems to remember only too well what it was like to be 21, and was lucky enough to still look it). I’m sure you can see the two of them trying not to laugh during some of the funnier dialogue, and apparently one of the film’s most memorable scenes, where Ben grabs the breast of a totally disinterested Mrs. Robinson, was improvised, and the reason Hoffman goes off and bangs his head against the wall was because he was trying to stop laughing. I bet they had a hoot making this.

Actually, I’ve not mentioned yet, how very, very funny ‘The Graduate’ is. I think it’s because when I think of it, about 10 other aspects of the film pop into my head at the same time : the music, the bits that make me cry, the editing effects, the acting, the ending. All of which I want to tell you about. But most of all, it’s a deeply funny f
ilm, with a wonderfully witty script. Try this :

Mrs. Robinson : Do you find me undesirable?

Ben : Oh, no, Mrs. Robinson. I think you’re the most attractive of all my parents’ friends. I mean that.

Or this :

Mr. Mc Guire : (very emphatically and seriously) I just want to say one word to you – just one word.

Ben: (completely deadpan throughout) Yes sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Ben: Yes I am.

Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'

Ben: Exactly how do you mean?

Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Ben: Yes I will.

Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.

Anyway, Ben spends his summer meeting Mrs. Robinson (we never learn her first name, and he never calls her anything but Mrs. Robinson, even when they’re in bed together) for sex in a hotel at night, and drifting around in his parents house drinking beer in the daytime. The passing of months is portrayed by a deliberately disorientating montage of shots, with a soundtrack of two Simon and Garfunkel songs. If I had to pick, I think this would have to be my favourite part of the film. Scenes of Ben lying in a hotel bed watching TV while Mrs. R. gets dressed and leaves, are cut with scenes of Ben watching TV at home with his mother lurking anxiously. A clip of Ben hoisting himself up out of the pool onto a lilo is cut with a clip of him slumping post-climactically onto Mrs. Robinson. As he lies there panting, we hear his father’s voice: “Ben, what are you doing?”, and he’s back on the lilo again. It’s very clever, very unsettling, and sums up the transitory, empty life he is leading.

Something’s got to give, and the catalyst for Ben’s next big change is the return of the Robinsons’ daughter, Elaine, just back from high school (and played by Katharine Ross, who
is about the only actress I’ve seen who can do that mix of innocence and desirability without you wanting to slap her). His parents think it would be just great if he and Elaine Robinson got together, and keep pushing, and pushing. I’m going to stop with the plot description very soon, promise, but Ben finds himself unable to avoid taking Elaine out on a date, despite Mrs. Robinson’s scary and aggressive veto of it, and, guess what, finds she is the first person that he can actually talk to and be himself with. Ooops. Mrs. R. doesn’t mind shagging Ben herself, but is damned if she’s going to let the filthy corrupted boy anywhere near her beautiful pure daughter. Big big trouble ensues, naturally, and the plot thickens in a way I wish my gravy would. Ben and Elaine embark on a twisty-turny, slightly silly but gorgeous adventure, to see if they can escape from their parents’ conventional morality, or whether it and society is too strong for them in the end.

I first saw this film when I was about 15, and it instantly shot to the top of my top 10 films list. Trouble is, nearly 15 years later, I think it’s still there. I’m not sure if it’s because I haven’t matured at all, or because ‘The Graduate’ has done so so beautifully. Last time I saw it, I kept thinking about ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, and ‘Generation X’. Sometimes when Ben spoke, I thought ‘that’s just so Holden Caulfield-ish’, and sometimes I was convinced that Douglas Coupland must have had a hand in the script. The point I’m trying to make is that, although ‘The Graduate’ was very much a film of its time, dealing with young adults becoming disillusioned and disgusted and confused by the hypocritical and materialistic values of their parents’ generation, this seems to be a lasting theme, one that was relevant long before this film was made, and one that is still vali
d today.

I think the things that set this film above other films, for me, are the extremely confident direction, and the way that the music is such an integral part of the action. Mike Nichols, the director, has the utmost faith that his script, and his actors, will keep you interested, all by themselves, and in the meantime he can do what he likes. He’s right, too. He can give us five minute sequences where there’s no dialogue at all. He can give us long, long reaction shots of someone’s face, that are fascinating and don’t need any narrative, because their changing expression says more than any clever techniques could. He can give us footage of the ‘hero’ running down a road, or driving a car, that go on and on, because he trusts us to understand that we’ll know what he was getting at, and feel it too, and we do. I miss this sort of film.

The music, of course, is by Simon and Garfunkel. You either like their music or you don’t, obviously, but the way that the music varies from being the narrative, to background, to a little tune that Ben is apparently whistling (very clever, with his mouth open), and back to the being the driving narrative force, is unique in a film as far as I know.

I’m going to talk about the ending a little bit now – sorry, and all that, but I need to. I think most people know how the film ends, even if they haven’t actually seen it. It’s been spoofed several times, in Wayne’s World 2, and in the Vic ‘n’ Bob car advert, and other places, and it even features in the original trailer for the film, for goodness sakes, but if you really don’t want to know, then look away now and don’t read any more.

I think the ending is what makes me give the film my everlasting respect. I love happy endings, wow, how I love them – as long as they’re believable. And here we have the potentially perfect example R
11; Ben and Elaine manage to escape, and jump onto a bus, fizzing with passion and excitement, ready to live happily ever after. But…they get on the bus…they’re all fired up….they look at each other and laugh…and then…their faces fall into repose. And we watch them, as they sit there, not looking at each other, both staring off into the distance. And I wonder.

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