. Question for Discussion: Why does Elaine Robinson run off with Benjamin Braddock? Does she really know what she wants to do?
Reading: TIME Magazine-"THE GENERATION GAP"(1967) ; Time, "Persons of the year: Middle Americans "; Ebert, "1967 Review of the Graduate" ; Ebert, "1997 Review of the Graduate" ;
Dougherty, "Review of the Graduate"
Music: Lyrics to "Mrs. Robinson" ,; Youtube: Mrs Robinson:
Lyrics to "I am Woman ""; Youtube: I am Woman:
Opening Lyrics to The Mary Tyler Moore Show ;
Video: Opening Montage to the Mary Tyler Moore Show
Critical Reviews of The Graduate
(1967)
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The Graduate and American Beauty
Now a piece of Americana every bit
as damning as
American
Beauty, The Graduate is one of the
greatest, most cynical comedies on film. Highly
recommended and nearly perfect.
filmcritic.com
gives honors to The Graduate
The Graduate in the late 1960s
"WHEN "THE GRADUATE" was released in 1967, it was a new kind of picture, part of a movement
of dry-humored, hip, intelligent, anti-Establishment, slightly sneering
films that would dominate the late '60s and 1970s.
Along with "M*A*S*H," "Little Big Man" and "Five Easy Pieces," the movie
would help overthrow a prudish,
apple-pie cinema that had dominated Hollywood since the patriotic
glory days of World War II."
San
Francisco Examiner Review of The Graduate
Benjamin on his Future
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.
Benjamin explains why he is so Rude
At a drive-in restaurant while they
stuff their faces with food in his open-topped convertible, she empathizes
when he [Benjamin] explains his rudeness, expressing his genuine
feelings for the first time in the film:
I've had this feeling ever since I
graduated. This kind of compulsion that I have to be rude all the
time...It's like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules
don't make any sense to me. They're being made up by all the wrong
people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves
up.
Disturbing the Sound of Silence
"...And in the naked light I
saw,
Ten Thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening.
People writing songs that voices
never share. No one dare disturb
the Sound of Silence." ....Lyrics
to The Sound of Silence
1. Do you agree with Roger Ebert
when he argues that "Today, looking at ``The Graduate,'' I
see Benjamin Braddock not as an admirable rebel, but as a self-centered
creep whose put-downs of adults are tiresome."
2. Do you agree with Roger Ebert's
assessment of The Graduate:
``The Graduate'' (I can see clearly
now) is a lesser movie. It comes out of a specific time in the late
1960s when parents stood for stodgy middle-class values, and ``the
kids'' were joyous rebels at the cutting edge of the sexual and
political revolutions. Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), the clueless
hero of ``The Graduate,'' was swept in on that wave of feeling,
even though it is clear today that he was utterly unaware of his
generation and existed outside time and space (he seems most at
home at the bottom of a swimming pool)."
3. Why is Benjamin so unsure
about his future? Why doesn't he strike out on his own and
become a grown-up adult?
4. Why is Benjamin's dialogue
so soft and muffled that it is sometimes hard to hear?
5. Would today's American
see Benjamin Braddock as a mixed-up kid who becomes a stalker of
his parent's best friends' daughter, Elaine? Do you agree
that from today's perspective Benjamin actions are like that of
a stalker?
6. What do you make of
the end of the movie, where Benjamin and Elaine are sitting at the
back of the bus? Are they a couple? One reviewer suggests
that "they are barely able to look each other in the eye" and seemed to be concerned with themselves rather than with each
other.
7. Do you agree with Tim Dirks that "They ride in the final image staring silently ahead, uncharacteristically
silent toward each other and not looking at each other. [Their relationship
is maybe not much different from the one Benjamin experienced with
Elaine's mother in bed.]"
7. What do you make of the
affair between Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin? Why is Mrs.
Robinson so unhappy?
8. Why is Benjamin attracted
to Elaine? After all his strange behavior, why does Elaine
decide to run off with Benjamin? Is Elaine as mixed-up and
confused as Benjamin?
9. Why does Benjamin want
to marry Elaine? Is he obsessed with marrying Elaine?
10. What does Elaine mean
when she says --after Mrs. Robinson assures her "It's too Late,"
-- "Not for Me."
11. Do you think the Robinsons,
especially Mrs. Robinson, are trying to force their daughter, Elaine,
to marry a man she clearly doesn't love and somehow repeat the same
mistakes that they did?
12. What do you make of the
lyrics to "Sounds of Silence"? How does this song
help explain and guide the larger film?
13. Why doesn't Benjamin want to become like his parents, rejecting their values and lifestyle?
14. Do you agree with Luke Indran
that "Mrs. Robinson isn't really the evil old bat that she
is made out to be, when you really think about it. By contrast,
Benjamin Braddock is arrogant and unlikable, and the only thing
that appeals him to the viewer is his confusion about what is happening
in his life and his fear of what the future holds."
15. Do you agree with one reviewer's
take on The Graduate:
"Benjamin Braddock is a fool,
a shiftless, selfish drifter, and by no means is he a hero or a
representative of his or any generation. Anyone who doesn’t see
this is missing the point of Mike Nichols’s 1967 masterpiece The
Graduate. Watching the film, it’s important to see that the
director is in on the joke, and that joke is on Benjamin (Dustin
Hoffman). Bored and unhappy with life, he jumps into bed with one
of his parents’ friends, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), only to
turn his back on her when he begins to feel guilty, turning his
attention toward the Robinsons’ innocent daughter Elaine (Katharine
Ross)."
16. Is Benjamin Braddock an
alienated youth, a symbolic hero of the 1960s counterculture's challenge
to the establishment and middle-class suburban values, or is he
just a confused, messed-up kid who lacks character, morality, and
a direction and purpose in life? Is it possible that Benjamin
can represent both these alternatives at one and the same time?
