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**Spoiler Alert**
**Spoiler Alert**
The Graduate was a unique movie for its time because of when it was made, who the actors were, and how America itself was changing. The movie made during the Vietnam War, and agitators are mentioned a couple of times during the film. Anti-war demonstrations were being conducted on college campuses all around the United States, especially at Berkeley, the university highlighted through much of the film.
It however must be said that the movie only touches upon this fact, the analysis of the movie goes into deeper historical context than just the war which was going on at the time the movie was filmed. So much culture was changing in America at that time. Some things that stand out in the movie are the generational gap, between the older people and the younger ones. The older more mature people whose lives are already defined, such as Ben's Parents represent an older America who represents old values, traditions, good morals and an old time America in which the father was the main provider for the family and knew what best for the family. The younger generation thought that the older was naïve, didn't understand them, and didn't get what was really going on.
The older generation had a defined family setting, the nuclear family, again traditional that was to be seen as the best parts of that, however we can see that as Elain's father is divorcing her mother that this area in America is beginning to fail and more and more marriages are falling apart ending in divorce. Perhaps alluding to the "Free love" that was espoused during that period in history, to break the bonds of matrimony and live free, and just "shack up".
This "Free love" might be able to possibly extend to Mrs. Robinson, the women whom seduced Ben. Women seducing men was unheard of during that time, let alone a woman of this age difference, yet so many things can be taken from the se4duction itself that lets us know how America is changing. Take a look at the naivety of Ben, as he drives her home, get out of his car, accompanies her to the door, goes inside, gets a drink, head up to her bedroom, helps her dress off, and all this time, not up until, the very end has he any idea whatsoever that she wants to seduce him. The seduction by women was unheard of in society, let alone a movie and repeated small brief flashes of her breast was unheard of at the time as well. The movie makers where testing the waters, and telling the ratings boards that America isn't this Naïve, that they can handle brief nudity in films and that they shouldn't have the belief that the culture isn't changing between the older and the younger, because it is.
Even after the seduction by Mrs. Robinson Ben is still in the precarious situation of not knowing what he wants to be, though he does know what he don't want to be, and that is like his parents and the people of his parents' generation. The movie plays upon this as that they are not above their own faults; Mrs. Robinson has a long lived love affair with Ben, all the while cheating on her own husband with a boy half her age. Totally unheard of and still a very great fault portrayed by her that the older generation might not be so traditional in values after all, so who are they to tell the younger generation how to live, how to act, and what to say, especially so after they have succumbed to their own form of evil?
However upon further inspection of Ben's character we can see that he thought of Mrs. Robinson as his only way out. One of the early scenes Mrs. Robinson throws Ben's car keys in the fish tank. This could represent several things. Firstly that Mr's Robinson was the key to what he wanted and the freedom he so much thought he deserved. He was just like a fish in the fish tank, caught in an area with very little move room and a go nowhere but in circles attitude unsure of what was happening or which way to go. We see this played out again as he is in a diving suit in the pool, he tries to come back up but his parents just push him right back down. Mrs. Robinson could be seen as his way out from a trapped existence, and she was the "key" to doing so.
All in this entire movie is about a transitional change from a more conservative culture to a more liberal one. This stance is repeated many times throughout the course of the film. It plays upon the fact that love can be used for ill or for gain. The differences between right and wrong is not always clear, and that lust and love are two different things, and while the movie challenges us to think about it in terms of a changing America in an antiwar type of culture, it still manages to entertain and tell us things about the human condition in that we are all human and just as likely to fail as to win and the winds of cultural change will blow no matter how hard you hold out.
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The GRADUATE (1967)
I Acquired A Philco 19 inch Color Television Set. From A Second-Hand Store: And Started Viewing The Movie When I Was About 14 or 15-Years Old. And My Mom Was Flipping Fuses Back Then. I Had The Television Tuned To Channel-12 KBHK-44 San Francisco, California Back Then. The Channel Began Showing The GRADUATE (1967). To My Mom's Amazement. If That Philco 19 inch Color Television Set Would Have Worked For Ever. She Would Have Been Really Hitting The Ceiling Back Then.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2010
- Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2011
- Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2024
- Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2024
Top reviews from other countries
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Favreau LouiseReviewed in Canada on September 17, 2024
DVD d'occasion d'excellente qualité pour le film qui a lancé la carrière de Dustin Hoffman!
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