Best movie sequence

quote:

---

With a clever transitional device and a montage of images, suggesting the emptiness and joylessness of his life, he walks back and forth transparently between these two pursuits and worlds. He rolls off the raft in the backyard pool, pulls on a white shirt, and enters a doorway to the Braddock home.

Through the door, he emerges into the hotel room (a Hotel Taft towel hangs on the inside of the bathroom door), where Mrs. Robinson (with her back to the camera) is removing her necklace. He lies against the bed's mostly-black headboard, as Mrs. Robinson (in a black bra and slip) sits next to him, leans over, unbuttons his white shirt (one button at a time), and caresses his chest. Benjamin blankly stares into space against a black background - the image emphasizes his sterile environment.

He rises from his bed, walks to the door (now in his own house) to shut it - briefly glimpsing his parents eating dinner in the dining room and worriedly gazing at him. After reclining to watch TV on a black chair, a jump-cut shows him back in the Taft Hotel bedroom, watching television and drinking a beer while resting against the bed's headboard. A female figure in a white bra walks past in front of him and the television, dresses, and leaves the room. His reflection is shown in the hotel bedroom's mirror.

Then in another cut, he is resting against a black pillow in his own bedroom. He puts on his swimming trunks, grabs a towel, leaves his room, passes his mother, and dives into the backyard pool.

One of their many sexual contacts is symbolized by his rising up onto a inflatable rubber pool raft (after the dive), inter-cut with his landing on top of Mrs. Robinson in the hotel bed. In another disorienting cut from their sexual coupling to his lounging on a raft in the backyard pool, the sound precedes the picture when his father asks:

Ben, what are you doing?

He turns and squints toward his despairing father who stands over him by the pool and questions his continued laziness and lack of direction. His father insists on knowing the point of his four years of college - without plans for graduate school or a career. He peers through his dark sunglasses at the silhouette of his father above him, as he is asked the question:

Mr. Braddock: Ben, what are you doing?
Ben: Well, I would say that I'm just drifting here in the pool.
Mr. Braddock: Why?
Ben: Well, it's very comfortable just to drift here.
Mr. Braddock: Have you thought about graduate school?
Ben: No.
Mr. Braddock: Would you mind telling me then what those four years of college were for? What was the point of all that hard work?
Ben: You got me.

He is either unable to communicate with his parents about his problems, or he is dishonest. Mrs. Braddock and then the two Robinsons flank Mr. Braddock. His mother encourages him to say hello to Mrs. Robinson. Her black silhouette dissolves into a scene of Benjamin shaving in a foggy bathroom - he is not in the Taft Hotel but at home - his mother enters and asks him about his nocturnal absences.

He perfunctorially explains: "I drive around...nothing else," drawing blood from his finger when questioned if he is meeting someone. He feels miserable having to lie - his mother recognizes his deception: "I don't want to pry into your affairs, but I would rather you didn't say anything at all and be dishonest. Good night." When she leaves and he calls after her: "Wait - wait a minute!", the scene again blends back - in mid-sentence, to another hotel rendezvous with Mrs. Robinson

---