While reading the last “Vanity Fair”, I learned that the making of “The Graduate” wasn’t as easy as its success, but  an odyssey of faith and spirit instead. The book had been a failure, the director was still unknown, and the topic, a scandal. It had been described as the bad version of “The Catcher in the Rye”, because of the similarities between the main characters: two young boys who come from a privileged part of society, but have decided to be outsiders.

When Mike Nichols had to decide on the cast of the movie, he picked the unknown Dustin Hoffman, for his ethnic look. It had to be someone who could understand how is to be in both sides. How is to be the son of a wealthy family, and still be a reject.  Hoffman, a Jewish young man who had isolated himself from Hollywood and had gone to the Jewish New York instead, was to become he symbol of the mainstream outsiders. The ones who are inside the privileged part of society, but are still aliens. So in this suburban life, in a world where the word future (or plastics, in this case) is the key, he goes on defying universal  taboos such as sleeping with  a mother and marrying the daughter.

We’re all graduates at some point of our life. We’re all Benjamin Braddok, in the blue pool, floating on our future without knowing what we’ll do after having finished this traditional ritual of graduating. We’re all Mrs Robinson, every time we fear that it’s too late for us, that our life has been taken from as and we’re doomed. And finally, we’re all Elaine Robinson too. When we, having being whatever we’ve been in life, are able to run away in a yellow bus  dressed up as a bride, with the one who woke us up,  just because we finally had the guts to. Whatever or whoever we did or were. Even if we were the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood.