The Graduate

In Mike Nichols' THE GRADUATE, a blank-faced, pathetic little creature named Benjamin comes back home from college. He adopts a name and uses it, one that is long and formal rather than the shorter 'Ben' form that his parents and parents' friends use. At a party reminiscent of James Joyce's short story, "The Dead", Benjamin walks around like a zombie offering weak retorts to adults demands, and eventually falling into what they want. He's supposedly rebellious, but really all that could be called rebellious is his dissatisfaction, which is really just inactivity, and contrary to the purpose of rebellion. At the party, zombified in his room with his fish, he shies away from the pressures of admiration that his parental figures are trying to throw on him. The matter-of-fact Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), a friend of his parents who he's known since childhood, sweeps in and rudely throws his keys in the fish tank, shows obliquely that she doesn't know how to drive, and scoffs away his dissatisfaction by demanding he take her home. He succumbs, and takes her home in his pretentious European sportscar as Simon and Garfunkel fills his empty head. Mrs. Robinson brings him upstairs and slowly seduces him in a style that is sly and weird, which suggests more thought, intelligence, and intelligence due to experience, which is more than Benjamin ever exhibits. He flees from the house but becomes enamored by the suggestion, eventually seeking the woman out in order for the film to display some clever wordplay and play-like sensibilities. For example, at a private event to which Benjamin isn't invited, he's caught up by the hosts who like him just because he's young (another character even remarks "20, that's a nice age to be"), and the butler who lets him into the ballroom says, "Here for the affair?" But Benjamin is an anti-rebel, succumbing to, and even being infected by everything he's supposedly dissatisfied with. And whether intentional or not, Nichols' villainous adult characters are smarter and have more perspective than Benjamin ever displays, who continues to call character by names like "Mrs. Robinson", even when he's angry. His dissatisfactions are always rooted in rationality as well, but the actions of people like Mrs. Robinson are rooted in instinct and desire, the adults all tell him to have fun while he can, and even seemingly anticipate the malaise that he's drowning in, knowing that the future is sad and boring. Except Mrs. Robinson, who is the real rebel of the film: a broken-down alcoholic who plays with her husband's partner's son. But there is nothing to be found within the character Benjamin but the sort of pretend rebellion that effuses itself across American movies. He's weak. Upon a family friend saying that he was probably a ladies man in college, he scoffs it off, and when he finally kisses Mrs. Robinson, she's more bored by what's clearly a boring and ineptly-put preamble to sex than he could ever imagine it to be. Whatever can be found from Benjamin as a hero is also the trickery of the establishment: making you think that rebellion looks like inactivity and Simon & Garfunkel rather than doing what you want because you want to do it.
★★ out of Five