Anne Bancroft’s dignified wife is far more sympathetic in this Mike Nichols masterpiece than Dustin Hoffman’s spoilt rich kid
By Kevin Maher
Are you Team Benjamin or Team Robinson? That’s the question that matters most for an appreciation of this groundbreaking drama, a film that launched the screen career of Dustin Hoffman and made audiences believe that a 36-year-old woman (Anne Bancroft) was at least two decades older than a 30-year-old man (Hoffman) and the mother of a 28-year-old daughter (Katharine Ross).
It’s a testament to the performances and the sly directorial flourishes of Mike Nichols that Hoffman convinces as the 21-year-old ennui-afflicted Benjamin. He floats in his rich parents’ pool to the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel while contemplating his desire for Bancroft’s middle-aged Mrs Robinson and the nourishing love he feels for Ross’s ingenuous student Elaine.
The beauty of the film, and of its cultural legacy, is that it somehow refracts evolving attitudes, especially towards societal norms and gender roles. Yes, Benjamin remains a fascinating protagonist, and his belief that all the “wrong people” in Sixties American society are “making the rules” gives him countercultural cachet. But he’s also weak, exploitative and grossly entitled, and he lies to satisfy his sexual appetites. When the critic Roger Ebert reviewed the movie’s rerelease in 1997 he famously called Benjamin “an insufferable creep”.
Conversely, the nominal villain, Mrs Robinson, is now the heroine. Suffering through her marriage with a boorish cigar-smoking husband (the brilliant Murray Hamilton), she’s dignified and elegant yet also conflicted and brutally honest, and is played by Bancroft with the heartbreaking suggestion of so many domestic humiliations sitting just below the surface. In her best scene she hides behind the bedroom door while Benjamin tells Elaine the truth about their affair. Her eyes are sunken, her face ashen and she eventually says, deadpan, “Goodbye Benjamin.” It’s the shot and the performance of the film. The movie belongs to Mrs Robinson. Here’s to you.
★★★★★
Source: The Graduate review — it’s Mrs Robinson you root for, not Hoffman’s creep