Reader's Request Week: The Graduate (1967)

1 year ago

Reader’s Request Week: The Graduate (1967)

IT’S JUST THIS THING THAT HAPPENED ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE

by Chris Cantoni

Have you ever had the feeling that a movie was mirroring your life just a bit too closely? Like, uncomfortably so? You sink lower in your seat and glance around, convinced that everyone else is thinking how strikingly reminiscent the movie is of your own screwed up life?

I am living the life of Benjamin Braddock and it is making me uncomfortable.

Well, not entirely. Take away the Alfa Romeo, the affair with the married woman, the ridiculous declarations of love to a girl I barely know (okay, okay, maybe that one can stay) - and then my life mirrors Ben’s. The ache I get from watching The Graduate comes from that universal place we all can relate to at one time or another: the uncertainty of life, and all the little ways we go about trying to fill in the answers.

Ben is just out of college, back home in sunny California with all of his parents’ friends at his graduation party, all of his parents’ friends greeting him and congratulating him, all of his parents’ friends telling him what he should do (“I want to say one word to you, just one word. Plastics.”). Ben isn’t even present, not really. He’s an alien on another planet, a deep-sea diver at the bottom of the ocean, kept separate from these creatures while running out of air.

Then comes Mrs. Robinson. Ever so subtly (and not subtly) seducing Ben. Anne Bancroft gets too much attention in this movie, despite a great performance. She’s even billed above Dustin Hoffman. Maybe it was the hit song, or maybe it’s just the appeal of being seduced by an older woman, the taboo of lustful abandon, but Mrs. Robinson isn’t the center of the film, she’s just one more desperate search for meaning. And why wouldn’t such an affair be appealing? A woman to take care of everything, to patiently explain to you everything you should do. She offers perfect comfort in our moments of weakness, when a grown man like Ben, like me, can sit on his bed and stare at the wall and have no idea how to face the darkness of the future. Mrs. Robinson is much more than a sex symbol; she’s what happens when someone gives up on not just finding the answers, but even asking the questions.

And then comes Elaine, Mrs. Robinson’s lovely daughter. Here Ben finds a woman who understands him, who relates to him, who’s in the same place in life. Is that all we need? Someone to relate to? After their first date, Ben is taken with her enough to defy Mrs. Robinson’s wishes. He wakes up from his post-graduation daze, finally able to see that numb, word-less sex and its security isn’t all that he wants from this life. Except that if there’s one thing that’s certain about Ben, and me, and so many of us finding ourselves all alone in the dark in our twenties, it’s that we don’t always know what we want. It’s the buried itch we can’t scratch, the vision just beyond the horizon, the paralyzing fear of making the wrong choice, even just once.

Every generation is the same. We get to be that certain age, to be finally free from high school, college, the plan set for us before we were born, and then… After all that careful planning and preparation, new age parenting books, safe plastic playgrounds, special classes for slower learners, ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, an award for every kid, uncountable “good jobs,” this is how you do things, this is where you go next, after all that - and without our full understanding, without warning at all, really - we’re asked to suddenly think for ourselves. We finally realize that despite endless preparation, the whole time we’ve been thinking for other people, and we’re left grasping at straws. The train keeps moving but we’ve run out of tracks.

After Ben runs out of gas on his way to stop Elaine’s wedding, he runs along a stretch of sidewalk that seems almost infinite. We are there too, with him. Sometimes the entirety of my twenties feels like that endless sidewalk, desperately running toward something but never able to reach it. Our goals are not what we thought they were. At the beginning of the film, Ben tells his impatient father his concerns, and is painfully dismissed. Yes, Ben, I am worried about my future. I want it to be different too.

And so he reaches the church, slams his hands against the window and screams, “Elaine! Elaine!” This is it, the woman that he’s going to marry, the one who understands him. Finally the plans will be made right again, we’ll be on the right track, everything will be secure. A decision made on our own. Ben and Elaine get on a bus and sit down beaming with joy.

Only the bus keeps on moving, and their glances at each other, the slow slackening of their faces reveals that maybe they aren’t all that sure about this step, either. Ben and Elaine are perhaps realizing what we all have to realize eventually: no matter the planning, or the confidence in our decisions, life will always be uncertain. The future will always be dark. If we knew all the answers ahead of time, we’d never bother showing up.