Graduation Redux
A Personal Note about The Graduate (1967)
My dear lovely readers,
This weekend I am reposting my review of The Graduate (1967) for two reasons:
My stepson is graduating high school today so we have had a whirlwind week of senior events and I ran out of time and brain power to write a new review.
I want to get back on track with a mid-week review release, so in a few days, there will be a new review in your inbox, should you choose to accept it.
It’s been an interesting parallel experience to be graduating at the same time as my stepson, albeit from very different schools into very different life experiences. We were applying to colleges at the same time (also for very different roles), and we were imagining new futures for ourselves and our family that each of those applications could potentially bring. We’re very excited for him and his next steps as they’re laid out now, and even more so for the surprise steps along the way when things don’t quite go as planned - that’s where we know he’ll especially shine.
In reflecting even more on The Graduate since I wrote the review below a few weeks ago, I think it is actually very topical. It’s a film about graduating from one stage of life to the next but even more so about the passivity that can come with that. I’ve written a lot about the need to be an active player in your own life this year, especially in the series on Capra films about being an active, engaged citizen and cinema-goer, and I think that is really the message I took away from The Graduate. Ben (Dustin Hoffman) is both metaphorically and literally at times adrift, allowing the current of life (or a travelator or a bus) move him within the confined limits of the pool he jumped into. He made active decisions for his own life up to a point, but now has to make another one, and he is paralyzed with fear, discomfort, and a perilous anxiety that he will make the wrong choice. But that indecision is itself the trap of passivity that keeps him confined to a silent darkness even as he graduates into a new realm of adulthood.
That sounds depressing, but I think it’s just depression, and the film is a sort of cautionary tale of passivity made manifest in an unblinking, unemotional, blank stare forward as Ben and his girl ride away from their respective happy endings. The Graduate is a very exaggerated visual metaphor, and I think it is actually a good one to see and think deeply about at this stage in my life and my stepson’s to serve as a reminder that life is going to happen regardless of whether we are actively involved in it or not. And I trust that he is very ready to take his university by storm, thriving in the place he has chosen for himself, following his curiosity about the world and his place in it, and being an active participant in his own future.
His Very Own Empire State Building of Depression
The Graduate (1967) – Score/Sound
As of Tuesday, I am now most officially Dr. Vaughn Joy after a man said my name, I shook Jennifer Hudson’s hand [no relation], and I focused extremely hard on not falling as I walked across the stage. It’s done. Two Bachelors’, two Masters’, and a PhD, and I am officially done with my life as a formal student. But there is always more to learn and think about so students are we all for life, and to exemplify that, I watched a film I had never seen before that I thought would be topical, but wowee is it not: Mike Nichols’s The Graduate (1967).
Of course, I knew it was about the seduction of a young Dustin Hoffman by the older Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) and their illicit affair, but what I did not know was that the movie is bananas. But I, of course, also knew that Simon & Garfunkel wrote the soundtrack so when the Review Roulette wheel landed on Score and Sound as our approach for this week, I was both excited and concerned about how to make sense of that beautiful little freak Paul Simon’s lyrics. For instance, “Mrs. Robinson” has been a long-time highlight of all my shower and commuting playlists since I was a teenager, but I didn’t know until this morning that it was a work in progress song of his own about Mrs. Roosevelt that Nichols decided was “Mrs. Robinson” now and knowing it wasn’t actually made for the film makes it make so much more sense. So, let’s dive into some of the sound choices, namely the use of silence in the film from Simon & Garfunkel’s excellent “The Sound of Silence” to the scuba suit.
Disclaimer: I know I talk about silence in films quite a bit, such as in my review of White Men Can’t Jump (1992) and in one of my favorite titled reviews, “The Cacophonous Silence of Mimes” on The Conversation (1974), but that’s because I find silence fascinating, and evidently so did Simon, Garfunkel, and Nichols. Every single element of a film is constructed. Decisions are made about everything, especially sound. Sound design is a science and an art that takes into consideration the psychological effects of the sound choice as well as the emotional and aesthetic. Background music and noise are meticulously designed to create the ambiance of the constructed world on screen and, at its best, manipulate your brain into a gentle suspension of reality so you can be more fully immersed in the film.
So, when there’s silence? Mate. It’s a jarring choice that forces you out of that gentle suspension of reality and slams you into a wall of uncomfortable realizations of connections between yourself and the story. And when it holds for several minutes? BRO. The discomfort is why Benjamin Braddock (Hoffman) is so deeply relatable in this film that is mostly intellectually skewed towards surreal. The Graduate is a masterclass in the sound of silence.
So, I need to spoil the film to say what I want to say, but that doesn’t mean that it is not worth watching for people who have not seen it. The film starts with Ben graduating from college and being completely lost in life. No plans, plenty of prospects, little drive, he’s home for the summer as a buffer between college and career, and Mrs. Robinson sniffs out this vulnerability. Mrs. Robinson is a deeply unhappy housewife who I can best describe as a Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard) type without the former fame. She knows she was once beautiful and glamorous for an average woman, and she is seething with rage at the silent march of time that took her youth and gave it to her beautiful daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross). In pursuit of the feeling of the primal power that comes from being wanted, a feeling lacking completely in her marriage, Mrs. Robinson pressures Ben into a sexual situation after his graduation party that knocks the first domino in their descent into a six-month affair.
When Elaine visits before returning to Berkeley for the fall term, she and Ben go on a date, much to the ire of Mrs. Robinson who feels discarded for her direct “younger model”. In her rage. Mrs. Robinson threatens to tell Elaine everything if Ben tries to end their affair and continue seeing her daughter. When Ben gets to her first and reveals the truth, Elaine is distraught and never wants to see him again.
So, naturally, he stalks her.
(And while he is stalking her, there is this just impeccable Simon & Garfunkel version of Scarborough Fair playing which is an old English folk song about impossible tasks for a former lover to accomplish if they want to rekindle the relationship, or in other words, it’s about unrequited love. Excellent use of sound. But it’s not silence, so let’s go back.)
While stalking Elaine, Ben pressures her into agreeing to marry him but learns that she is also engaged to another guy. When her parents find out about Ben’s presence at Berkeley and his intentions, they whisk Elaine away to marry the other guy, but Ben is a super sleuth and crashes the wedding, wields the cross as a weapon, and steals the bride like a regular old suburban King Kong climbing his very own Empire State Building of depression.
This film starts fairly tamely with Ben’s depression vocalized by Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” as he smoothly passes an endless monotony of white tiles on an airport travelator. He stands starkly still while his body is moved in a pre-determined direction by the conveyor belt, the first of many exquisite visual metaphors in the film that express his mental state throughout. Life is happening around him and to him while he stands still on a one-way express he chose to get on – a beautiful visual analogy for silence as well as a metaphor for life after graduation when the individual is now prompted to use what they learned in real life.
Each time “The Sound of Silence” plays in the film, Ben’s depression and confusion and anxiety are on display and we are drawn into the oddly silent emotional storm in his mind. Again, at the end of the film, when he and Elaine run from the wedding, laughing in a state of faux elation, they board a bus. This bus is the counterpart to the airport travelator carrying Ben from one part of his life to the next as he suspects he is expected to do, and again “The Sound of Silence” draws us into his mind as he slowly comes to realize that his depression is not cured by Elaine’s presence. He is merely re-entering the cycle of monotony and social expectation that ushered him into the film, in a new familiar silence. What is most interesting, however, is that Elaine is seemingly in it with him. Elaine’s elation dissipates as the song begins to play, suggesting that she is also drawn into his mind and slowly realizing that she is making a mistake but chose to get on the bus and cannot get off. Her smile fades and she looks to Ben for a connection, but he is back to his comfortable numbness in the darkness of the sound of silence.
Silence is used so beautifully as a metaphor and analogy in this film, but also literally at multiple points. One I particularly love is the silence around Ben’s breathing when his parents pressure him into modelling a scuba suit for no discernible reason. As Ben walks from the house to the pool, flippers flapping on the cement and family clapping and laughing orders at him, we hear only his heavy breathing and see only his perspective. The silence around the slow movement and heavy breaths feels like the start of a panic attack that lasts just long enough to force the audience to acknowledge their discomfort until Ben hops in the pool and his heavy breathing is accompanied by the sound of water. The water only alleviates the discomfort and echoed panic minimally as it replaces those feelings with a palpable pressure, and we are suddenly, silently prompted to examine how this pressure makes us feel. Not Ben, not his family above in the world of the film, but us, as we are launched out of our gentle suspension of reality for a moment in this jarring several minutes.
Moments like these bond you emotionally with Ben, feeling his breath and seeing through his eyes from inside the pressurized scuba suit, looking out at a world that doesn’t understand him or us. For those who have experienced the spiralizing effects of feeling lost, as though a tornado is spinning you in on yourself as a hurricane rips you apart, the pressurized silence between those two forces is relatable; Ben is relatable, even when he is doing things no real human would do. And I think that’s the result of perfectly placed moments of the sound of silence.
Because I’m Never Done When I Say I Am
A note
There’s a 2004 film with Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner and Mark Ruffalo and Shirley MacLaine called Rumor Has It that’s a follow on from The Graduate. Aniston realizes that her family is the basis for the book and film and it’s as gimmicky as it sounds but that doesn’t make it any less fun.
Wonder how many realized that leg belonged to Linda gray?