“Every way you look at it you lose”

Anne Bancroft has died. Reading through her obituary, I couldn’t help but think the following that I love The Graduate, but the older I get, the more I think of Ben as a fool and sympathize with Mrs. Robinson. As Roger Ebert put it in his 1997 review of the film :

Today, looking at “The Graduate,” I see Benjamin not as an admirable rebel, but as a self-centered creep whose put-downs of adults are tiresome….Mrs. Robinson is the only person in the movie who is not playing old tapes. She is bored by a drone of a husband, she drinks too much, she seduces Benjamin not out of lust but out of kindness or desperation….She is also sardonic, satirical and articulate–the only person in the movie you would want to have a conversation with.

I don’t agree with Ebert’s conclusion that Ben is a jerk anymore than I agree with my initial reaction to the film 13 years ago when I considered Mrs. Robinson to be the film’s villain. I think what makes The Graduate so interesting is that both characters selfishly project themselves on Elaine, thanks to the brilliant acting of Dustin Hoffman, who perfectly evokes Ben’s clueless misanthropy, and especially Bancroft who plays Mrs. Robinson’s overbearing protectionism under a thin veil of sarcasm and regret. While I can understand Bancroft’s dismay at being known primarily for Mrs. Robinson, it’s a remarkable performance that any actor would be jealous of.

I can only imagine how she’s react to every goddamned obituary having the title “Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson”. Google News already has 17 results. Sigh.


posted by greg on June 7, 2005 @ 4:14 pm

5 comments

  1. Wasn’t it 10 years ago we were having this conversation? Dang.

    Comment by Ross A Lincoln — June 7, 2005 @ 6:51 pm

  2. Mrs. Robinson was supposed to be the villian? Man, I’m usually better at reading movies than this. Maybe it was intended for her to be that way, but Bancroft made her just a really appealing character from the get-go for me.

    Comment by Amanda Marcotte — June 7, 2005 @ 7:32 pm

  3. Actress Anne Bancroft Dies at Age 73

    Anne Bancroft, who won the 1962 best actress Oscar as the teacher of a young Helen Keller in “The Mi

    Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator — June 8, 2005 @ 7:20 am

  4. My take on it- I never saw her as the villain… and i never saw Ben as a “hero”. i see them both as unhappy, selfish people using each other, and the daughter, to placate their own boredom and desperation. They are both sort of anti-heros, but their aren’t really any sympathetic characters in the film. The “villain” in the film is the boredom of a rich, privelaged lifestyle that has driven Ben and Mrs. Robinson to be incredibly unhappy people.

    the ending (with ben getting the girl) is not a happy one. if their’d been a sequel, it’s likely that Ben would be an abusive cheating husband, and the daughter (can’t remember her name) would be a miserable alcoholic desperate housewife.

    Comment by tomN! — June 10, 2005 @ 11:27 am

  5. I think you nailed it by saying they were both busy projecting onto Elaine. The thing about The Graduate is that it holds up to fresh viewing after several decades.

    Comment by Diane — June 13, 2005 @ 12:29 pm

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