Film Review Category

A recent episode of the Arts and Entertainment channel's "Movies That Shook The World" series focused on "The Graduate" (1967) and watching it gave me an idea for a new thread category in the forum: film reviews.

Many members have posted comments on films, but the comments are scattered across several threads. Why not have a separate category?

My idea is to restrict the reviews to literary/avant-garde films. Many movies of this type are based on novels or stage plays anyway, but we could also include films based on original screenplays of high literary value. In other words, no reviews of the latest Disney movie or stupid teen "comedy." What say you?

Getting back to A & E's historical analysis of "The Graduate":

It was turned down by every major studio in Hollywood. Producer Lawrence Turman had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find financing from a foreign schlock-film producer. As the first serious movie to highlight the generation gap, "The Graduate" was a huge box-office success, grossing $55 million (about $400 million in today's money) and becoming the third most profitable film in Hollywood history up to then. It launched the film careers of actors Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross, director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry.

A summary for those who have lived in a cave their entire lives and never heard of the film:

After finishing college, Benjamin goes home to southern California where he is confronted by his upper-class parents and their friends, who live a phony existence marked by hypocrisy, infidelity, closet alcoholism and snobbery. The lifestyle is encapsulated by one word emphasized to him at a welcome-home party -- plastics! Benjamin is worried about his future for obvious reasons. His sees that his life is on the cusp of being usurped by a social system he finds meaningless. In an absurdly funny scene Benjamin is persuaded to don a birthday suit of full SCUBA gear and dive into the family swimming pool for the amusement of his parents and their friends.

Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner, seduces Benjamin and he begins a sordid affair with her to escape his sense of loneliness. (Ann Bancroft, who died recently, became a legend for her peformance as Mrs. Robinson.) Benjamin is forced into a date with the daughter, Elaine Robinson, against the wishes of her mother. He rushes through the date until he realizes he actually likes Elaine. He continues seeing Elaine, which infuriates Mrs. Robinson and leads to a climactic scene where Elaine realizes Benjamin has been having an affair with her mother.

Elaine returns to college in Berkeley and Benjamin follows her there in his birthday sports car. He takes a room nearby and trails Elaine around campus to talk to her. Elaine is angry and confused. She has been told that Benjamin forced himself on her mother. He denies it, says he loves her rather than her mother, and asks Elaine to marry him. She relents a bit and says maybe.

But Mrs. Robinson intervenes and talks Elaine into marrying her Berkeley boyfriend. Benjamin makes it to the church just in time to see the bride and groom exchanging their final vows. From a second-floor balcony, he pounds on the window and screams her name. Elaine looks up and screams his name. They both run to the exit door, which Benjamin barricades from the outside. They wave down a passing bus, climb inside and take seats at the rear. They smile at each other like mischievous children, then they stare straight ahead with a look of reflection on what just happened. Almost miraculously, they had managed to escape the phony futures their parents mapped out for them.

"The Graduate" was the first film to use hip popular music as the sound track -- in its case, the songs of Simon and Garfunkel. This music added a whole new dimension to film-making since the lyrics seemed to tell the story as it unfolded visually.

The movie was based on a novel by Charles Webb, who took his own message to heart in his personal life. Webb gave away the millions he was paid in royalties and film rights and worked in minimum-wage jobs. How many authors ever did that?

Some personal notes:

President Lyndon Johnson saw the film and remarked, "I don't get it." How could it have been otherwise for a man who didn't "get it" that the U.S. had made a tragic mistake in Vietnam? Johnson belonged heart and soul to the "plastics" generation.

Seeing the movie for the first time in 1967 had a profound effect on my life. I was a Yuppie long before the word was coined -- a young urban professional. Married, metropolitan newspaper reporter, taxpayer, drone in the System. The film made me realize I had caved in to other peoples' expectations and abandoned my own dreams. At that age I should have been backpacking across Europe, chasing young senoritas and frauleins, and writing The Great American Novel in seedy hotels. Instead, I was Benjamin if he had taken that job in plastics.

"The Graduate" was a turning point that inspired me to reinvent myself. I embraced Bob Dylan's words: he not busy being born/is busy dying. I got divorced, quit my job, enjoyed adventures in a tropical rainforest, traveled over half the world, fell in love with wild women, wrote my novel. Was it worth it? Let me put it this way. When it comes time for me to die, I won't have to wonder if I ever lived.

Which brings me to a rather unpleasant observation. Far too many young people today seem hell-bent to conform to the System, chase money and social rank rather than experiencing real life, and judge other people by the same phony standard. It's as if they have never questioned the status quo or envisioned any alternative other than capitulation. I hate to say this, but it smacks of cowardice. I take absolutely no satisfaction from this observation -- in fact, it makes me feel sad and fear for the future even if I won't be around to see it.