The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 2015)

by Fiona Underhill

The Graduate is one of the most enduring and influential classics of the 1960s. It was Dustin Hoffman’s breakthrough role, at the age of 30 (although he was playing 10 years younger) as the protagonist – existential drifter Ben Braddock. After graduating college, Ben is aimless and experiencing ennui. He punctuates the boredom with an affair with his parent’s friend Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft, age 36 but playing ten years older) who he has known his whole life. Despite Ben’s attempts to resist both his own parents and Mr Robinson, at their insistence, he takes out the Robinson’s daughter Elaine (the beautiful Katherine Ross) and ends up falling for her. Things come to a head in a tumultuous final act.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl was the directorial debut of Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). It was adapted from Phoebe Gloeckner’s semi-autobiographical graphic novel by Heller herself. The protagonist Minnie (Bel Powley, 22 at the time of filming) is a 15 year old girl in 1970s San Francisco, going through an explosion of rebelliousness and sexual awakening. Her mother Charlotte (Kristen Wiig) is a free-spirit - who takes drugs, curses and parties. Minnie starts an affair with Charlotte’s 35 year old boyfriend, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård) and starts keeping a diary (which she records on cassette tapes). Of course, this also ends with revelations and recriminations.

One of the most distinctive aspects of The Diary of a Teenage Girl is the use of illustration (representing Minnie’s drawings and comic panels) which punctuate the narrative. These are obviously based on the drawings from Gloeckner’s graphic novel, which were, in turn, heavily influenced by Aline Kominsky (who is also a presence in the film, as Minnie starts corresponding with her). The animation and artwork for the film was done by Sara Gunnarsdottir and they illuminate this groundbreaking depiction of a teen girl’s sexuality. In much the same way, Simon and Garfunkel’s iconic soundtrack for The Graduate underscores the narrative and Ben’s inner turmoil. The film opens and closes on The Sound of Silence, with its lyrics “people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening” representing the shallow, materialistic world of Ben and Elaine’s parents. And the lyric from Mrs Robinson; “we’d like to help you learn to help yourself” sadly being addressed to Mrs Robinson who has depression and alcoholism due to the fact that she’s trapped in a loveless marriage.

Although made nearly 50 years apart, the two films are set less than a decade from each other and the characters are very much products of their times. The Robinsons and Braddocks come from the post-war boomtime in the US, when capitalism, consumerism and creating the image of a perfect family centered around a perfect housewife were all-important. Ben and Elaine are young people living in the 60s, when teenagers became completely disillusioned with their parents’ generation because of Vietnam, the civil rights movement etc. It was the time of hippies, drugs, free love and, most importantly, questioning authority and the status quo. So, when Ben returns from college and his parents and their friends are talking to him about what he’s going to do with his life - “I just want to say one word to you. Plastics” – Ben falls into a slump and starts drifting (on the lounger in his pool and also through life).

Minnie’s mother Charlotte is also a product of the 60s – she wants to escape anything she views as bourgeois. She’s had two children by two different men, but is not quite at the independent feminist woman stage (which became more prevalent in the 80s) – she still very much relies upon men for her happiness. Charlotte identifies with Patty Hearst – who is making headlines for being kidnapped by a left-wing terrorist group, then joining in with their criminal activities, including bank robbery. Minnie questions “what kind of person falls in love with the people who kidnap them?” but this behavior obviously echoes what she is doing with Monroe (a sad, deadbeat much older man who is taking advantage of her).

In The Graduate, we hardly see any interaction between Elaine and Mrs Robinson (other than the devastating final lines), but we know that Mrs Robinson is fiercely protective of Elaine. Perhaps Anne Bancroft’s best acting moment (in a sublimely great performance across the entire film) comes when she has told Ben in no uncertain terms that he is NOT to date Elaine. When Ben comes to collect Elaine for said date, she is sitting in the dark, smoking, staring dead-eyed at the television. There is a dolly-zoom on her face from Ben’s perspective. She looks grief-stricken, utterly betrayed and above all blood-boilingly angry. She communicates so much in that facial expression, as does Katherine Ross in the famous final shot of the film, on the backseat of the bus. Ben and Mrs Robinson exchange a few words, in hurried whispers. Bancroft speaks in a monotone, through gritted teeth “I’m extremely upset about it, Benjamin.”

Mrs Robinson’s motives for the strength of her feeling about keeping Elaine and Ben apart are never explicitly laid out. Ben thinks it’s because “I’m good enough for you, but I’m not good enough to associate with your daughter.” Aside from the ‘ickiness’ of Ben sleeping with a mother/daughter, I think Mrs Robinson’s main concerns are insecurities to do with her age and desirability and Ben sleeping with her daughter would be too much of a stab in the heart. She also wants Elaine to make what she considers a ‘good marriage,’ avoiding the mistakes she has made. The final spoken lines of the film are an icy cold take-down of poor Mrs Robinson, who tells Ben (who has come to stop Elaine marrying someone else); “it’s too late!” And Elaine replies; “not for me.”

The Braddocks express their love for their son by bragging about his college achievements as a track star and award recipient (complete with a graduation party that is full of their friends and seemingly no one of Ben’s own age). They also lavish expensive gifts on Ben – his graduation present is an Alfa Romeo and his 21st birthday present is a ridiculous $200 (in 1967) diving suit that Ben clearly neither needs or wants. They are keen for him to have a plan – graduate school or a good job and they are also eager for him to make a good marital match. They are still very much stuck in a 50s way of thinking, whereas Ben clearly wants to take a more laissez-faire 60s approach to life, at his tender age.

Similarly to Mrs Robinson, Charlotte in The Diary of a Teenage Girl also is conscious of her age and wanting to be seen as sexy and cool “if anyone asks, we’re sisters.” On the surface, she appears to care less about Minnie and her sister Gretel (Abby Wait) than the Robinsons and Braddocks do about their children. She lets Minnie have a lot of freedom and is even encouraging of her drinking, doing drugs and sexually experimenting (she does not know about Monroe, of course). Charlotte is still beholden to the men in her life, however. Gretel’s Dad Pascal (Christopher Meloni) told her (with his patronizing pseudo-intellectual cod psychology) that there was “something sexual about Minnie’s need for physical affection from you, it’s not natural” and after this, Charlotte stopped hugging Minnie. Then, when Pascal starts to get suspicious about Minnie and Monroe, he tells Charlotte about his hunch. Monroe tells her it’s ridiculous; “don’t let Mr. PhD manipulate you like this. You’re an independent woman! You don’t take shit from anyone!” The horrible irony being that of course, Monroe is gaslighting Charlotte by telling her this and she swallows it. After the truth comes out, Minnie runs away from home for a few days. When she returns, Charlotte has been looking for Minnie, worried sick about her. Ultimately, she does care about her daughters and does choose them over the men in her life.

Both Mrs Robinson and Charlotte are extremely complex and flawed, as mothers and human beings. However, one can have a great deal of sympathy and perhaps empathy for them. They are both products of their times and the societies they were living in, especially in terms of the pressures and expectations on women. Both of them have daughters and are struggling for their daughters to not repeat the mistakes of their own lives, but their approaches differ wildly. Mrs. Robinson is treating Elaine in what is probably a very similar way to how she was raised, but somehow expects it to have a different outcome.

Charlotte has gone to the polar-opposite extreme of her ‘bourgeois family’, she is totally rebelling against it and is trying to raise her daughters with the hippy ideals of complete freedom. This, of course, backfires in fairly spectacular fashion, mainly because Charlotte is still beholden to (crappy) men. Fortunately, Minnie has a revelation right at the end of the film; “I always thought I wanted to be exactly like my Mom. But she thinks she needs a man to be happy. I don’t. Maybe it’s not about being loved by somebody else.” The beauty of the richly detailed characterizations in both films means that we, the audience, can imagine what becomes of these people after the credits roll and we can give them as much of a happy ending as we choose. I’m sure their lives continue to be as complicated and imperfect as we’ve seen onscreen because that is what people are, whether they are mothers or not. So, here’s to all the movie mamas – may you continue to be messy, multifaceted muthas!