The Graduate
Today for my GE60A 1960s history class, I was required to go watch the Graduate at the Northwest Campus Auditorium. The auditorium is like a mini-theater. I have been there many times for history movies, but this is the first movie I am actually writing about.
The movie was excellent. Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, ends up having an affair with a woman named Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s business partner. Inevitably, Ben falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s dauther, Elaine. Elaine leans of Ben’s secret affair with her mother through Ben himself. However, her mother manipulates the story afterwards so that it appears to her that Ben raped her mother. Elaine naturally grows to detest Benjamin.
Elaine is a student at UC Berkeley. Benjamin decides one day that he is destined to marry Elaine. He even tells his parents. Shortly after, he drives up to Berkeley in an attempt to propose to her. He ends up repeating this proposal what seems as daily. Elaine admits that she is engaged to another man, Carl Smith. The two have a wedding ceremony in Santa Barabara.
In the conclusion, Ben drives down to Santa Barbara from Berkeley and stops the wedding by shouting her name from behind a large class window at the back of the church. Elaine shouts, “Ben!,” runs away from the ceremony at her parents’ distgust and hops a bus with Ben toward happiness.
The end.
It was an awesome movie! I even noticed that in Wayne’s World II they spoof the ending of this movie. Definitely a film classic. Go rent it.