Watching old classics for the first time is an interesting experience because you usually can't help but have been influenced by what you have heard about it and or seen in references/parodies/quotes etc. The Graduate is obviously very famous and famous for one thing really - "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me." This line and the plot point that it implies are all I knew about the film so the second half was more or less unknown to me. And I found it a little disappointing.
To my mind the seduction of the graduate, Ben, by Mrs Robinson was fascinating and I wanted to know more about Mrs Robinson - why was she cheating, why with a neighbour's son, why with someone so ill-equipped to handle an affair and why she only wanted sex. Mrs Robinson was a character I wanted to know much more about but she is more or less dropped in the second half. Instead we get a slightly turgid tracking of Ben on his mission to marry Elaine, following her around campus and pestering her with proposals.
Elaine is interesting if only because her actions are so bizarre. (Spoilers) A boy she likes takes her on a date to a strip club and humiliates her until she cries. He then confesses that he has been sleeping with her mother. When she moves back to university he stalks her. Result - she abandons her new husband and runs away to make a life with him. Did that not strike anyone else as odd? I really want to know what her thought process was there.
Now don't get me wrong - I think that's a fantastic story: guy has an affair with older woman and then realises her daughter is the love of his life. I just think you really have to do some 'splainin as to how he wins her back and I couldn't find any of that.
One twist that I thought the film was going to take never materialised (which kind of felt like a let down but was more my own fault than the film's). Mrs Robinson protested so strongly at Ben joking about going out with Elaine that I though she would be revealed as his half-sister, the result of the previous generations misdemeanours. I still think that would be a brutal twist - especially if revealed just after they've eloped and gotten married or something.
Points that I did like about the film
- The soundtrack is (famously) wonderful
- Dustin Hoffman is fantasticly squirm-inducingly good
- It has so many really powerful dramatic and brilliant individual scenes; for example:
- The seduction at Mrs Robinson's House
- The revelation to Elaine
- The confrontation with Mr Robinson
- The church scene
Overall I'd give it 8/10
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