The Graduate (1967)

Well let me start by saying that I really enjoyed this movie. It was the first movie out of any of them (in cinema class) that actually, truly, surprised me by adding objectionable content and making something moral out of all the immoral activity within it.


By no means do I think that the movie exemplifies a healthy example of how things should turn out. I think the ending is happy but it’s skewed in my opinion. Just because you’re in love with a girl doesn’t mean you get the luxury of crashing her wedding, and on top of that, while you most certainly don’t get the pleasure of actually walking out with her from the crashing of her wedding.


I really liked what they did with the camera and sound in the beginning of the movie when Mrs. Robinson was undressing. They didn’t just flat out show her naked, it jumped around her like it was going to show her but then didn’t. While that was going on you heard Ben saying all that he was saying on top of the pan in pan out cut here cut there camera angles revolving around Mrs. Robinson and Ben. When Ben is talking during this he is just talking, it’s like that montage video we watched: what he says is repeated here and there and then it’s done so at a speed in which a person wouldn’t normally speak. The sound is run faster. I think this 15 to 20 seconds does a great job exemplifying the fact that there’s a massive freak out, red flag, alarm going off in Ben’s head at the moment.


The reason I liked the movie so much is because, though skewed, everything fit together in a coherent understandable manner. It’s a drama that speaks reality in such a farfetched thrown out there manner. I don’t like science fiction movies per se, but The Graduate, I guess, was like the science fiction of drama. There’s such grandeur about it. So many unreal elements are in it but somehow it’s brought together in a way the audience can identify and connect and even relate to.


As an audience we got from laid back and concerned about Ben’s future to his relationship with Mrs. Robinson all the way to the social controversy of finding out about that affair, while dating the afairees daughter (being truly in love with her) and then not only letting her go in confusion and dismay but blatantly steeling her back. There’s a wide spectrum there!


I really enjoyed the movie, I’m not sure why Ebert changed his mind about it…