Dear Readers, my dispatches will always be free and open to everyone. I am unable to use my hands and I’m writing, via dictation, with the help of my family. If you could become a paid subscriber and support me, it’d mean so much. If the straightest places are where the weirdest things happen, then the American suburbs in the postwar period have good reason to fascinate artists. From Cheever, Updike, Roth and Yates, to David Lynch and Sam Mendes's
I watched the Graduate when I was 17 and was obsessed with it. Everything. The 1960s aesthetics, the pure beauty of the soundtrack, the thrill of transgressive youth and older woman. And for me, identifying with Benjamin, I was thrilled with the journey of the character and the ending. Then I rewatched it at the age of 35, into my middle age, and suddenly, I was identifying with Mrs Robinson. There was a moment in montage sequence of her staring into space after they have made love. She was no longer a villain to me, she was seeking life as time surprised her, as I was beginning to understand the passing of time and youth. We are all victims of time like that.
One of my favourite American films of that era. It caught my own zeitgeist by the throat and helped me understand my own frustration with life. It galvanised my ambition. I saw it as a corollary to the fabulous Italian movies I was seeing which had been coming from De Sica,Rossellini Fellini and most powerfully Antonioni. Its popularity was surely to do with humour as much as subtle existential perspective.
Thank you for this brilliant and insightful analysis. I had one very serious cringe moment however, when you accused Mrs. Robinson of rape. Benjamin, despite his virginal status was well past the age of consent. And to punish purely for pleasure? Not to condone Mrs. Robinson‘s false accusation of rape, but not many women want to share their lover, especially not with their daughter. And she had warned him.
Thank you for this posting about a film I saw years ago, and then several times after. It is, for me, at least, a lense focused exclusively on white America, its boredom and peculiarities. The film bothered me: for its cold calculated sexuality, it was like something “anesthyzed upon a table.” And the end, as the protagonist interrupts a wedding ceremony, then the couple ran as children to take a school bus appeared improbable, and a foolish metaphor. I should read the book. Of course, it appeared that this was the director’ script. Maybe the novel is better.
Yesterday I was at Dartmouth University listening to a Navajo author about his book, Unsettling Truths. All I heard is what I know for facts. But today I cannot even smile at the plight of White America. And here is to you Mrs Robinson!
I watched the Graduate when I was 17 and was obsessed with it. Everything. The 1960s aesthetics, the pure beauty of the soundtrack, the thrill of transgressive youth and older woman. And for me, identifying with Benjamin, I was thrilled with the journey of the character and the ending. Then I rewatched it at the age of 35, into my middle age, and suddenly, I was identifying with Mrs Robinson. There was a moment in montage sequence of her staring into space after they have made love. She was no longer a villain to me, she was seeking life as time surprised her, as I was beginning to understand the passing of time and youth. We are all victims of time like that.
How sad that I never realized The Graduate was a book - I suppose the film is so huge it eclipsed the novel in modern consciousness.
How a piece of art can sit quietly within, and be provoked by criticism into such clarity! That’s a lovely piece, thank you
One of my favourite American films of that era. It caught my own zeitgeist by the throat and helped me understand my own frustration with life. It galvanised my ambition. I saw it as a corollary to the fabulous Italian movies I was seeing which had been coming from De Sica,Rossellini Fellini and most powerfully Antonioni. Its popularity was surely to do with humour as much as subtle existential perspective.
Love, Don
Thank you for this brilliant and insightful analysis. I had one very serious cringe moment however, when you accused Mrs. Robinson of rape. Benjamin, despite his virginal status was well past the age of consent. And to punish purely for pleasure? Not to condone Mrs. Robinson‘s false accusation of rape, but not many women want to share their lover, especially not with their daughter. And she had warned him.
Thank you for this posting about a film I saw years ago, and then several times after. It is, for me, at least, a lense focused exclusively on white America, its boredom and peculiarities. The film bothered me: for its cold calculated sexuality, it was like something “anesthyzed upon a table.” And the end, as the protagonist interrupts a wedding ceremony, then the couple ran as children to take a school bus appeared improbable, and a foolish metaphor. I should read the book. Of course, it appeared that this was the director’ script. Maybe the novel is better.
Yesterday I was at Dartmouth University listening to a Navajo author about his book, Unsettling Truths. All I heard is what I know for facts. But today I cannot even smile at the plight of White America. And here is to you Mrs Robinson!
I loved this commentary. Thanks, Hanif.
Fabulous analysis.! Makes me want to read the book. I’d always thought the movie was from an original script.
Brilliant