Art & Life

Why can't life be more like an old-time movie, at least some of the time? In many ways I prefer Art to Reality and art is often a reflection of what reality should be as in the 1967 movie The Graduate which made Dustin Hoffman a star. For some this is a movie about adultery but for me I was more captivated by the larger love story of the last third of the film where Benjamin Braddock goes off to Berkeley to find Elaine so he can marry her. Ben had had an affair with her mother, Mrs. Robinson, and Elaine can't forgive him and so she tries to forget about him and is set to marry a young doctor. During the ceremony at a Presbyterian church bride and groom are about to kiss each other when Ben screams "Elaine" over and over from the church choir and the movie ends with Ben stealing her away and they live happily ever after.

The trouble with pc is that it is never poetic, the proper thing for Ben to have done would have been to forget about Elaine and get on with his life and she could get on with hers. If this happened in real life Ben would be arrested for stalking and harassment but Ben does the heroic thing over the proper thing to do. This was the Second Golden Age of Movies, the period from the late '60s through the '70s, as movies then portrayed real life with real emotions, they had real storylines and you don't seem to get this quality in the cinema anymore. The Graduate has turned into Redeye but Ben is my kind of character and hats off to him, if only more people sensed the potential for art in real life instead of getting all uppity. The Simon and Garfunkel score was just the icing on the cake, a DVD worth having in your collection. People who masturbate your mind