I was monitoring the symbolism during the first twenty-five minutes of "The Graduate."
A credit sequence of a pedestrian conveyor belt in an airport, a shot that would be repeated in Tarantino's Jackie Brown. Life is just moving Ben along without resistance. He does nothing to forward his own future. A man is like his luggage: moved along in an orderly fashion until picked up.
The sad clown in his parents' house. This is also Ben: desaturated in color, surrounded by gay finery, an object of merriment to everyone else, yet sour-faced, dealing with his mother still spit-smoothing his hair.
Water as solace, used also to indicate his shimmering waves of thought. Yet Ben is also encased in a diving suit, pressured by his parents in the same way he is pressured to date Elaine. He is immersed in his situation, deeper and deeper, and the camera pulls back to fade him into a grim obscurity.
He lies by the pool in dark glasses and white shorts, unconscious of his own youthful appeal... something that perhaps would later inform Tom Cruise's solitary dance performance in Risky Business.
Is it a radical romance? Sure. Mrs. Robinson insists that Ben maintain a romantic etiquette; he must open her car door, hang up her coat. Yet the affair is utterly under her control, and the ending is uncertain and cynical.
Elaine is less than her mother. Elaine lacks willpower; she lets herself be carried along by whatever whim Ben bugs her enough to allow. Mrs. Robinson bullies Ben into sex; Ben pressures Elaine into action with psychoanalytic questions. She seems to let herself be carried along for the moment, only later furrowing her brow in doubt.
Is this neurotic... or erotic? There seems to be an emphasis on the latter phrase.
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