23 October 2008

The Graduate


I first heard of this film in a documentary or some such about Dustin Hoffman quite a few years ago. I'm not sure why I saw it. I think it was after I saw Rain Man. I didn't think about it at all until a few days ago when it turned up in some lame list about movies where the protagonist's main goal is to get some tail, and they expend a lot of effort to get to that goal. I might include a link to that list later. I remembered that it's supposedly held in high esteem, so I checked out imdb to make sure and discovered I was right. So I watched it.

Great movie. It's really not what I expected. I knew about the MILF seductress thing, but that's about all I knew. I had no idea how much Simon & Garfunkel's music was intertwined with it all, and most of the plot was unknown to me at all. Dustin Hoffman was great; I can't really relate to a lot of it, but his performance did get across the emotional maelstrom that I'm sure most people have experienced quite well. A lot of it was funny, some profound, and a good amount pretty darn ridiculous. It's got the whole coming-of-age deal which is usually fun.

I think possibly the best part of it all was the music. It really gave me a new appreciation for Simon & Garfunkel; The Sounds of Silence is such a fantastic song. I need to listen to them more. A featured review of the film on imdb stressed the perfection of the music in the context of the characters, especially that particular song. A lot of the time Hoffman goes around oblivious to the sounds around him, seemingly shutting out all of the confusion.

I enjoyed it.

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