Ending Scene Analysis - The Graduate (1967)

Having been released in the midst of counter-culture exuberance and the rebellious free love era of the 1960's, The Graduate is well known as a cultural American staple with themes well fitting for the decade it was made. With a young college graduate with his whole life ahead of him as our protagonist, we follow Benjamin Braddock as he goes through a series of crazy events all stemming from his desire to be different and rebel from the carefully cut out expectations of his over-the-top parents and other authority figures. This hidden desire for rebellion leads him through a rather clumsy sexual affair with Mrs. Robinson, a married older friend of his parents, before he eventually focuses his attention on Elaine, Mrs. Robinson's daughter. Though, Mrs. Robinson very strongly forbids Ben from seeing Elaine, in a fit of rebellion, he does so anyway. This eventually trickles down to the unfortunate circumstances that lead to Elaine finally finding out about Ben's affair with her mother and the eventual falling out of the Robinson family. Despite this, Ben continues to press for the controversial and problematic as he pursues Elaine and attempts to convince her into a rushed marriage. Ben finds out a little too late that the Robinsons have already arranged a marriage for Elaine with a young man with a suitable future and income. In a fit, Ben seeks out Elaine at the church where the marriage is happening, successfully crashes it, fights off the families of both Elaine and her groom with a cross and whisks away Elaine to a public bus, laughing all through out.

However, the very last shots of the film are no doubt, the absolute most important. Within the last couple of runs of the camera, we see the laughing couple sitting at the back of the bus slowly calm themselves, their smiles fading as they look around awkwardly and then to each other with a tension that seems too uncomfortable to be suited for a happy ending of a quirky comedy. The sad tune of Simon and Garfunkle's "The Sound of Silence" plays as they force themselves to smile once more, but fail, falling into a pair of sullen melancholy looks that avoid the camera's gaze with a sense of 'what have we done' and 'what now' forcing themselves into the minds of the audience without a single word of dialogue, It speaks volumes on the decisions made by the protagonist and his supposed new found love through out the film, on whether the paths they have chosen were truly what they wanted at the end of the day, or if they were all just impulsive instances of rebellion against the authority figures in their lives; both Ben's and Elaine's parents that were hardly ever truly thought or fleshed out. It's bizarre because an intelligent adult viewer would be fully aware of the bizarreness of Ben and Elaine's decision making, Ben's stubborness in persuing a girl that hardly wants anything to do with him, his self imposed need to marry her only after one date, Elaine's acceptance of Ben's marriage proposal despite his affair with her own mother; it all seems very rushed and backwards, yet it isn't until the last few seconds of the film that we become aware that it was all purposefully written to be that bizarre and clumsy (not just a fault of bad writing), because the protagonists do finally become self aware of it all with the solemn wordless looks they give to each other, a silent solidarity that clearly reads 'we screwed up, didn't we?'.