Although the movie is now more than 50 years old, The Graduate still holds up. The coming-of-age story that spoke to youths of the ‘60s still speaks to new viewers today.
Dustin Hoffman’s Relatable Turn As Benjamin
Benjamin Braddock is the quintessential coming-of-age protagonist. He’s a 21-year-old kid who finishes college, returns home to his parents, and then has to figure out what he’s going to do with his life.
Dustin Hoffman plays Benjamin as a sort of disillusioned everyman. Every viewer can relate to Benjamin’s disaffected personality and lack of direction because it’s universal.
The Complicated Love Triangle
Love triangles make for intriguing movies. In Casablanca, Ingrid Bergman is torn between her new husband and an old flame. In Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, Bill Murray and a precocious 15-year-old compete for the affections of a schoolteacher.
One of the most complicated and fascinating love triangles in movie history can be found in The Graduate as Benjamin is caught between an older woman and her kind, interesting, age-appropriate daughter.
Simon & Garfunkel’s Somber Music
The success of The Graduate significantly boosted Simon & Garfunkel’s profile. Licensing existing songs for movie soundtracks is common now that Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese have made it cool, but it was still a rarity in Hollywood when Nichols chose to include previous Simon & Garfunkel hits in The Graduate.
The somber, sobering rhythm of tracks like “The Sound of Silence” and “Mrs. Robinson” pair perfectly with the cerebral storytelling of Nichols’ masterpiece.
Katharine Ross’ Endearing Elaine Robinson
The most likable character in the movie is Elaine Robinson. Katharine Ross brings the same endearing quality to Elaine that she would later bring to Etta Place in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, offering an innocent counterpoint to the movie’s morally questionable leads.
Benjamin is infatuated with Elaine from the beginning, but he needs to confront his misgivings and become a better person before she’ll run away with him.
Robert Surtees’ Sobering Cinematography
Cinematographer Robert Surtees shot The Graduate on Technicolor, but his visuals aren’t overly stylized. He uses a naturalistic look to capture a slice of life. Surtees came up with a bunch of iconic, thought-provoking shots to encapsulate Benjamin’s feelings of isolation, like drifting through LAX on a moving walkway in the opening scene or sitting at the bottom of the pool in his new scuba gear in the middle of his parents’ humiliating garden party.
Surtees’ camera sticks around in the final scene when Benjamin and Elaine are sitting on the bus to create one of the most memorable endings in movie history.
Benjamin’s Aimlessness
Finishing school at age 21 and having no idea what to do next is a universally relatable feeling. Benjamin’s aimlessness throughout The Graduate will resonate with young audiences for decades to come.
Benjamin has followed a strict plan his whole life and it’s all been leading up to adulthood, and now that he’s there, he doesn‘t know what he wants to do. Everybody has been there.
Buck Henry & Calder Willingham’s Perfectly Crafted Screenplay
Buck Henry and Calder Willingham’s script for The Graduate was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars back when the award had the longer, more unwieldy title of “Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.”
Henry and Willingham’s screenplay, based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Webb, beautifully captures the spirit of the source material. The plot moves along briskly but takes plenty of time to flesh out the characters and the complex lives they lead.
Anne Bancroft’s Nuanced Performance As Mrs. Robinson
In the hands of a lesser actor, the role of Mrs. Robinson could’ve just been a one-dimensional “cougar” stereotype. But an Oscar-nominated Anne Bancroft brought real depth to the character and made her feel human.
Instead of just playing her as an older woman into younger men, Bancroft brings out the reasons for Mrs. Robinson’s infidelity and the fractures in her marriage.
Mike Nichols’ Satire Of Dispirited Youth
In The Graduate, Mike Nichols brilliantly satirizes dispirited youth. A lot of kids like Benjamin don’t even really know what they’re rebelling against. He feels the kind of vague, indefinable angst that all young people feel.
Benjamin has done everything he was supposed to throughout his whole life and now that he can finally reap the rewards, he’s not sure if all the hard work was worth it.
The Bittersweet Final Scene
On paper, the final scene of The Graduate sounds like a Hollywood fairy tale ending. Benjamin chases down the love of his life, interrupts her wedding, and they run away together. But what makes The Graduate’s ending so iconic is that the camera lingers on Benjamin and Elaine sitting at the back of the bus after the initial thrill of abandoning a wedding ceremony has worn off.
It’s not necessarily a “happily ever after” ending, because no one knows what the future will bring, and Benjamin and Elaine might not be destined to be together forever. All they can do is give it their best shot and see where it goes.
