The Graduate Movie Sequence

Benjamin Braddock is a successful young man who graduates college from the East Coast and is now back home in Los Angeles with no idea what his future holds for him. In the film The Graduate, Ben is back home with a college degree and no clue where to go next. Ben seems to be bothered by something in his life. When questioned about it by his dad, he says that he is worried about his future. This is typical for a young man who is fresh out of college. In my research I found that the sequence when he is finally home is the best example of sequence analysis to the film.
The start of the scene opens up with Ben staring into oblivion with a fish tank behind him and the only sound being projected are noises coming from the fish tank. The use of lighting in the room is high lighting, showing Ben’s facial emotions. In this scene, Ben’s face is numb, it’s neither happy nor sad. Ben’s parents pull him up from the couch and start to fix his hair as he walks down stairs to the party. The next scene shows him greeting guests as he is bombarded by questions about his future and what he plans to do with it. The scene uses a handheld camera to follow Ben on this …show more content…
An example of this 0:6:58 when Ben sits down on his bed looking at the fish tank. The camera is positioned behind the fish tank having Ben’s face in the picture in focus and the bedroom door not in focus. Mrs. Robinson opens the door and stumbles in. The camera then focuses on Mrs. Robinson coming in thinking Ben’s room was the restroom. She then asks Ben for a ride home and Ben stubbornly agrees to take her and she throws his keys into the fish tank with the fish tank becoming the focus of the shot. This sets up a sort of symbolic evidence to the movie as Mrs. Robinson disrupts the tank, which represents a sense of security and peace to Ben. As we will discover over the course of the movie, Ben’s quite life is disrupted by the presence of Mrs.