AFI 100: The Graduate (#17)

This was a real disappointment for me. Coming in at number 17 on AFI's 100 Greatest American Films of All Time, I was expecting a lot from this film, but it turns out this was very much a product of the time in which it was created and I don't think it translated very well to my current day sensibilities.

Pretty much everyone in the film is unlikeable, either for the entire duration or starting about halfway in, and it's rare when any of their actions appear to have sensible motivation(s), if any, behind them. The ending of the film is the perfect example of this, wherein characters do completely inane things that resolve in ways that they shouldn't and still nobody seems particularly happy with the outcome. I was barely halfway through the film when I started eying the DVD player to see how much more of this I had to bear.

Afterwards I went to my roommate Jeff, who had done his graduate work in film, and asked him what made this film so great. Surprisingly, he wasn't particularly enamoured with the film either, and could only note that he thought the film had introduced the concept of the montage and that in part was why it was so well received. I haven't actually been able to verify that, and frankly, I don't have any interest in doing so.

However, during a phone conversation with my father later that week, he pointed out that the film paralleled what people were feeling and doing at the time. The film was released in 1967, as the United States was knee deep in the Vietnam war. The country was divided on what should be done and there was a lot of confusion and bad decisions being made. He said a lot of Americans could identify with the lead, Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman), and his inability to figure out what to do with their lives.

While this certainly gave me a bit more perspective on the film, it wasn't enough to make up for the time I lost watching it, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.