Atypically, he worked with 13 different cinematographers across his 19 movies. Woody Allen, as a contrast, as prolific as he is as Mike Nichols was not, used similar quantity of cinematographers across ~50 movies. Woody Allen, only because, I find his movies visually beautiful, too.
Or maybe because I'm growing beyond my limit of capability. Time will tell.
This is one thing that we should lament about AI generating all the code. You never get to look back at your own "hand crafted" work with the distance of time. Progress or perspective, it does not matter, one would probably find something they could have done better.
I think I'm actually going to miss that feeling.
The second time, I had graduated college, seen more of the world and how people treated each other, and I felt like I got it a lot more. I didn't feel offended by the long awkward moments anymore. It was entertaining and I was able to see the virtues and flaws of the characters, and even recognize traits of myself and other people I knew.
I can't remember for sure whether I've seen it a third time, but I think I have, and it would have been in my mid or late twenties. With that watching, I was able to appreciate it most as a film and a product of its time, and imagine how it might have landed to its audience over the years. My recollection of it now is of someone who is by nature a pretty passive person struggling with the concept of his own agency, which speaks to me personally.
In my opinion the thing that aged the worst was the soundtrack. The Simon & Garfunkel songs from this movie are so iconic and timeless at this point that it doesn't feel like a soundtrack to me but like someone made a TikTok edit and put those songs over the film, if that makes sense. Nobody in my generation knows the connection between those songs they heard as part of pop culture and The Graduate. This is an impossible psychological barrier to pass for me. Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" cannot dissolve into any movie's soundtrack for me when used unironically because I consider it a meme song (Mrs. Robinson as well to a lesser extent). It certainly would not have felt that way back then. I don't feel that way about modern songs with modern movies even though I recognize it is the exact same situation.
The last time I felt this way, I was still in school and disillusioned. Do you not consume unironic media anymore (or ever)?
If someone made an updated version of The Graduate, it would have to pick on a different version of conformity - maybe on "I'm different just like everyone else".
An opportune time for a remake would be the 2010s when working at FANG had a similar cachet to working in "plastics"
(Such a brilliant edit: https://youtu.be/5FJaoRLpf7M?si=iAinUlOIZw3u89Jw&t=85)
https://www.stevenbenedict.ie/2012/12/the-graduate/
(9 minute audio essay.)
I don't mean this in a trite way. The character portrayed is supposed to be awkward and anxious. Feeling awkward and anxious in real life, left him in the right frame of mind when he walked on set. He looked awkward and anxious, because he actually was.
Actually feeling what the character is supposed to be feeling, is the heart of method acting. The upside of method acting is that it creates very powerful performances. The downside of method acting is that you have to experience all of the feelings of the depicted drama.