With graduation season right around the corner, many students, especially seniors, are facing a strange emotional moment: part excitement, part dread and a whole lot of “What now?” Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” (1967) captures that feeling, at least in my sophomore understanding, with eerie precision.

I’m not graduating just yet, but watching “The Graduate” feels like peeking into my future and the near future of many of my peers, where every well-meaning conversation with a “real” adult turns into a question about your post-grad plans, with no answer feeling quite right. The film follows 20-year-old Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), a recent college graduate returning to his upper-middle-class home. It’s a film about the in-between: You’re technically an adult, but not yet sure how to be one.

Benjamin is met with praise, gifts and endless inquiries about his next step and plans now that he’s graduated. But Benjamin, disconnected and disillusioned, is drifting, quite often literally in a pool. As his parents try to nudge him toward a “prosperous” future, it’s not one under his own accord, and Benjamin resists the path laid out for him.

This comes to a head when Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), a family friend, seduces him at a party, sparking a secret affair and escalating Benjamin’s aimlessness. However, things spiral even more when Benjamin falls in love with her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross).

Elaine offers Benjamin a kind of emotional clarity; unfortunately, however, her character isn’t as fully developed as the rest of the cast. While Ross brings warmth and sensitivity to the role, Elaine often feels more symbolic than specific, less a real person, more a possible escape route for Benjamin. Still, what makes the film powerful isn’t sharp narrative beats or tidy character arcs. It drifts, like Benjamin, prioritizing its atmosphere and feeling over a conventional narrative structure. What matters isn’t what happens next to Benjamin, but that lost and unsettled state so many students, especially those graduating, can relate to.

Hoffman’s performance is a standout. His nervous energy, mumbled line delivery and awkward pauses perfectly capture the feeling of not knowing who you are or what you want with your life. His performance is vulnerable: the way he sinks into the back of a room or flees in intimate moments. Bancroft’s acting is equally brilliant, playing Mrs. Robinson with a mix of bitterness, restraint and pain. Her performance avoids caricature and cliché, which would have been easy to fall into, and instead reveals a woman hardened by life’s disappointments after doing everything right. Supporting roles add to the film’s emotional richness where William Daniels and Elizabeth Wilson are perfect as Benjamin’s well-meaning but oblivious parents, and Ross, despite the script’s limitations, gives Elaine a sensitivity and gentleness needed in the role.

But what truly elevates “The Graduate” is Mike Nichols’ direction. Visually, the film is a meticulously crafted work of art. Nichols’ framing isolates Benjamin, with doorways, fish tanks, scuba masks and all the tools he uses to show how trapped he feels. One of the film’s most famous cuts links Benjamin on a pool raft with him in bed with Mrs. Robinson. It’s a darkly funny metaphor: His floating, aimless summer is now indistinguishable from the emptiness of the affair. Throughout the film, there is a recurring motif of water, such as when Benjamin is submerged in the pool, floating on a raft and peering through his fish tank. Each shot evokes a sense of drowning, of being weighed down by the expectation of adults and those around you, something many soon-to-be and recent college graduates can relate to.

Of course, you can’t talk about “The Graduate” without mentioning its soundtrack. Scored by Simon & Garfunkel, the music is iconic, melancholy and timeless. “The Sound of Silence” and “Scarborough Fair” perfectly capture Benjamin’s drifting inner life, while “Mrs. Robinson” adds a layer of irony and sharpness to its soundtrack. I’ll admit, though, I might be a bit biased here as a longtime Simon & Garfunkel fan due to my father’s love of the band.

However, I maintain that the soundtrack is one of the film’s emotional cornerstones. Nichols lets entire songs play out, using them not to drive the plot but to deepen the scene’s meaning and its overall impact. The lyrics don’t explain the story; they echo it, allowing the music to fill the emotional silence between the characters. That choice in particular feels especially relevant for graduates. Sometimes, there aren’t clear words for those feelings. But some songs get close to explaining it.
“The Graduate” doesn’t offer easy answers. It’s not about finding your purpose or forging the perfect path. It’s about letting yourself feel lost and letting that feeling exist. And while that might not sound comforting, especially for seniors about to step into a vast, uncertain world, maybe that’s the point. For anyone sitting or about to be in that transitional space, watching tassels turn and families cheer, “The Graduate” doesn’t promise the clarity that those families and people want. It does, however, offer an emotional honesty that can be rare, and sometimes, especially during graduation season, that’s all we need.