And here's to you Mrs Robinson...

The Graduate (1967)

'Mrs. Robinson' must be the earliest English pop song that I was exposed to when my auntie Indra Shan and her family made a pilgrimage to Penang in the 1971/72 December school holidays. I vividly remember Joe (my Western cultured cousin) strumming away on Kapok guitar and his sister, Usha, singing. At that time, I thought it was one of those Christian Sunday school songs with words like 'Jesus loves you more than you will know' and 'Heaven holds a place for those who pray'.

Of course, it is a soundtrack from the 'The Graduate'.

A young Dustin Hoffmann (another of my favourite actors) stars as a high-scoring university student who is experiencing a coming-of-age period, confused about the future. He portrayed a 21-year-old youth while he was actually 30, but he did an excellent job.

It starts with Benjamin Braddock coming home to a party of happy family friends who congratulate him on his excellent achievement at college. Benjamin is confused about what to do with his life, but everyone around him just asks him to continue studying and be somebody.

Mrs. Robinson, a family friend and a bored housewife, seduces him. After many hesitations and unrelated to Mr. Robinson's advice to unwind before going head-on into work, Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson start a bumbling, meaningless, lusty affair.

At Mr Robinson's and Benjamin's parents' insistence, a meeting is arranged for Benjamin to meet Elaine, Robinson's 19-year-old Berkeley-studying daughter—much to Mrs Robinson's awe. Despite Benjamin's attempt to make the date as unpleasant as possible for Elaine, the couple hooks up anyway.

Tempers flare between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson, and Benjamin must tell Elaine about his illicit activity before she learns about it from her mother, who threatens to tell her.

Disgusted, Elaine returns to Berkeley. By then, Benjamin had become sure of his feelings and pursued Elaine. The climax of the show is when a wedding is arranged between Elaine and her casual friend, her family. Our hero arrives there a wee bit too late when the couple had been pronounced man and wife and were kissing. But upon hearing the call of her name by Benjamin through a glass panel from the pavilion above, Elaine absconds from the altar against the resistance from family members. In the final scene, Elaine and Benjamin lock the mob in the church, board a municipal bus and head away into the horizon...

This film is listed as a satirical comedy-drama, but I failed to see the joke. Maybe Benjamin's clumsy questions and actions when teased by the flirtatious Mrs. Robinson give some comedy relief, but otherwise, it deals with a matter considered serious and frowned upon in the 1960s. On the contrary, there was no condemnation from pressure groups, but it was listed as a movie worth preserving in the U.S. National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"!