8) The Sound Of Silence – The Graduate
The Graduate has one of the most truly iconic soundtracks of any film, period. And there’s no song more representative of Benjamin Braddock, the film’s alienated, aimless protagonist, than “The Sound of Silence,” Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s anthem of youthful defiance against superficiality, conformity and passivity. The song itself predates The Graduate and found life as an antiwar rallying cry, though its association with the Mike Nichols-directed film is what propelled it to the forefront of national consciousness.
“The Sound of Silence” works perfectly within The Graduate, because it puts into words the exact sentiments Benjamin feels but can never articulate. His post-college restlessness and lack of purpose causes him to wander, as if asleep, through his life, and his disconnect from the world around him puts him in the perfect position to observe the artificiality and lack of real communication that’s both present in his parents’ generation and threatening to consume his.
The song first appears in The Graduate‘s opening scenes, as Benjamin descends into San Francisco and moves through the airport as if in a dream (his preference for the automated walkway strengthens the sensation that the character is sleepwalking). It recurs throughout the film, always in moments when Benjamin is disconnected from what’s happening around him, both because he feels alienated by his culture and fails to even attempt to engage with it. “The Sound of Silence” is a deeply melancholy number in this respect, but it feels so right, like the only anthem a character of Benjamin’s particular mannerisms and experiences could produce. Though The Graduate has aged since 1967, the ties which bind Benjamin and “The Sound of Silence” together are eternal.