I just can´t believe I just saw this amazing movie today. I mean, I am wondering why I never had the urge to see it before. And I have not words to describe it. All I can say is that it´s worth watching, not only because of the relationship between Ben, Mrs. Robinson and Elaine Robinson, but because it is a first glimpse of how do you wish your future to be and who you want to spend it with.
I like Dustin Hoffman´s character: he is a little bit naive and scared of how his future is going to be like because people around him somehow are forcing him to decide in that precise moment what will happen next. Ben has never faced that kind of decision before, and the pressure is very overwhelming.
On the other hand, we have Mrs. Robinson, who is only interested in Ben because of this thing they have together and seems to be so sure of herself. She is the seducer, and she plays the part extremely well, but the minute that Ben becomes aware that sex is just not enough and wants to know a little bit more about her, she is the one that´s inexperienced. The roles are reversed, Ben is the adult there, he is the one that feels that she is there with him trying to run away from something and shockinly...it´s her marriage!
Why did she get married? Because she was pregnant...that would be one of the reasons, but is that enough for her? Of course not, she appears to want more and yet, she prefers to be alone with a husband than to be by herself. She is unhappy by choice. Sure you could argue that it was because of the decade, because that´s what you were supposed to do back then when you got pregnant, but when you really take a closer look at it, no one forced her to do it, she took it as a chore, as a mechanical thing, as the only solution for her problem.
And then, we have Elaine Robinson, the girl that Ben falls for. She can´t be his true love, mainly because of his sexual relationship with his mother, and the harder he pretends not to see her, his parents push him into a date with her. And then he takes her to that awful place, trying to present himself as a very bad guy who´s not worth taking a second look, he is shaken up by the tears that wash down her face. Once all the music and the show and the noise are gone, Ben is able to listen to her and Elaine is willing to listen to him. That´s the whole conflict of the movie: how could Ben have sex with Mrs. Robinson and fall for her daughter? Why is she forbidden to him? Is it because he is not good for her as her parents say? Or is there something else? Maybe they don´t want her to marry for love but rather from someone who can provide for her. A man that will be able to satisfy her economic needs but not her heart.
Mrs. Robinson knows what it feels like to be in a loveless marriage, but she wants her daughter to have the same thing as she does. Isn´t that selfish or what? She simply does not seem to care and in the end, Elaine is able to silence all the people around her and take a deep look into her heart, her soul and choose between a real possibility of being happy and a good marriage with nothing in common. The choice she makes comes from within her and decides to fight for her choice, to think that she deserves something better than just settle with a man she barely knows.
It was a really incredible movie that took me a while to see, but I liked it because of its beauty, its way of showing emotions versus desire; the need for love, the pressure to being someone that everybody likes, the pretending-to-be-happily married couple in comparison to Ben´s family, and a whole lot of things that are running through my mind just now but I willing choose to listen to the sounds of silence
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