The Graduate

I'm not really sure how I felt about the main character, Benjamin, in The Graduate. He was awkward. It is still unclear to me why exactly he chose to sleep with Mrs. Robinson. Perhaps he liked Elaine the whole time and felt it was a way to get closer to her. Maybe, it was because he was in the rebellious stage after graduating. I think it was both. Although, I don't think he was consciously doing it, he had reasons for his affair. In a place of pressure and confusion over his future, he needed something that was constant, something that he had control over. And, Mrs. Robinson was just that. When he called her to the hotel, she came right away. It seems although everything was on his terms. Except of course, until he wants to have a conversation with her. This is the true turning point in the movie. When she refuses to have a conversation with him he realizes what he's been doing the whole time. I think the power had kind of gotten to his head and as soon as it was gone he came back to reality. For Elaine, I think he obviously knew how he had felt about her for awhile. They were childhood friends so clearly they knew each other pretty well. I don't believe their date was the first time he ever thought about her, and Mrs. Robinson was just an older version of Elaine. I'm not exactly sure why Mrs. Robinson does not want Benjamin seeing Elaine, but I do think she turns out to be the "villain" in this movie. All in all, The Graduate was a good very and did a great job of taking a funny concept and underlying it with a serious concept (of graduating, of course).