the movieGOOMBA

CLASSIC GOOMBA

In college I had this really great film instructor who once showed us a film clip of The Graduate as an example of a film montage. As a side note, his exact words were "watch this when you graduate, and you'll cry like a freaking baby." Apparently that was from his own personal experience.

I did watch that movie, but it was during my senior year. If I had waited just one more year to watch that movie, would I have cried? I think I would have.

What comes to mind now in my post graduated brain, is the montage of Dustin Hoffman, his unfulfilled life, and his affair with Mrs. Robinson. This montage is so meticulously planned that Benjamin is transported into the next scene. It is so effortless and so precise that the viewer can feel how empty Benjamin's life is. The gaps of time that are omitted really tell us that those gaps weren't worth seeing anyway. Nothing is happening to Ben, so Ben keeps waking up every day, having an elicit affair with Mrs. Robinson. He's not even trying to figure out what to do with himself. Each day blends into another; Ben jumps out of the pool, but it becomes Ben jumping onto Mrs. Robinson. Ben sits in a chair, and it becomes him sitting on a bed. In this montage, he's just a zombie walking through time, and that is what it is to be a graduate.

There is a point after graduating from college that you are basically going no where. You just wake up and live each day. Your next goals are so far away that you may not even know what they are anymore. When people ask you what you've been up to these past couple weeks/months, you can't remember anything. Its all a blur.

The Graduate really captures the feelings of post graduation; the depression and the indifference. Thankfully I didn't have to re-experience them when I experienced the film.