The Youth Rebellion against the System in the 1960s

. Question for Discussion: Why does Elaine
Robinson run off with Benjamin Braddock?
Does she really know what she wants to do?

Reading: Ebert, "1967 Review of the Graduate" ;
Ebert, "1997Review of the Graduate" ;
Dirks, "Review of the Graduate";
Dougherty, "Review of the Graduate"

Critical Reviews of The Graduate (1967)

The 1960s and the Rise of the
Counterculture

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

"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

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.

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.

"...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 Sounds 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 not want to become like his parents and reject 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?