It wasn’t that I was lazy—I needed to invent all sort of activities to fill the time in the insurance office, I was willing to do anything as long as it wasn’t work. I puzzled about this. I had come from a place where everything was on a knife-edge, where life and death issues were a daily event. I’d shot people and been shot at by people and burned down villages and wrecked crops and money had no meaning. Now I was supposed to get interested in people worrying about their silly possessions and how to replace them should they be lost. It was ridiculous. Most houses did not burn down. Most cars were not wrecked. But the foolish fear that it might happen drove them to pay insurance premiums. For which insurance companies tried every trick they could think of to avoid paying out on them. It just wasn’t real, wasn’t a sensible business for life, it truly did not matter. I badly needed a new job--one that was of some importance.
The dazzling masterpiece by Mike Nichols, The Graduate was written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham, based on the novel by Charles Webb. It starred Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin, Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson and Katherine Ross as Elaine, her daughter. The whole business was blessed with songs by Simon and Garfunkel, who especially wrote the Mrs Robinson song for the film.
Benjamin comes home from college and there is plenty of unwelcome advice about his future from his parents and their friends.
He tries to hide from them at the bottom of the swimming pool... but there is no escape.
On the other hand, there’s the neighbour, Mrs Robinson.
Mrs Robinson lets her feelings on Benjamin’s future be known.
Buck Henry plays the desk clerk at the motel where the affair is carried out.“Got any luggage?”Benjamin produces his toothbrush from his pocket.
“Do you find me attractive, Benjamin?”“Oh yes, Mrs Robinson. You’re the most attractive of all my parent’s friends.”
But when Benjamin takes Elaine (Mrs Robinson’s daughter) on a date to please his parents, Mrs Robinson reacts venomously, and Elaine suffers the worst date in history.
Benjamin and Elaine meet up at college and fall in love, until Benjamin tells her the truth about mum and Mrs Robinson responds by exacting her promised revenge.
The truth is out and chaos ensues. Elaine is forced to accept marriage to a more respectable boy behind Benjamin’s back.
Benjamin turns up at Elaine’s wedding, to which Mrs Robinson does not react well. But Benjamin abducts the bride anyway.
Truly, middle class life was never so wonderfully captured, and the film made us all reconsider whether what we are aspiring to is really worth having.
